Collaborative Aboriginal Art Map

For the last 2 weeks the children and their friends have been working together on a mixed media, Aboriginal influenced map of Australia.

First the kids used magazine scraps to collage a map of Australia.  We got in some geography by showing which areas are forested and which are desert.

Youngest group beginning their map collage

Collage base complete

Once it was dry we added Aboriginal dot symbols to show the location of major cities. The children then decorated a mini canvas each with an Australian animal.

R's lizard mini canvas

L's possum mini canvas

Next we mounted the mini canvas pictures onto our map. They turned out pretty good I think and it was great to work as a group on a single art work.

Little kids canvas

Big kids canvas

Basketball

This term we are joining our friends from Home Education Penrith for basketball lessons at the sports centre. Here's a couple of pictures from today's session. Looks like the kids need to grow a bit!

Nature Study - Autumn Leaves

We have some lovely Autumn colours in the garden right now, so this week's nature study was on leaves. First the children roamed around the front and back gardens looking for as many different coloured leaves as they could find. They mounted small bits of leaf on some card with double sided tape attached to it.

Leaf colours from our gardens. 

Next we did a sketch in watercolour pencils of one of our most colourful trees.

Autumn tree by L

Autumn tree by R

We searched around the tree for some beautiful leaves with many colours on them. We made a sketch of our favourite leaves.

Autumn leaves by L

Autumn leaves by R

Opening Buds

Today we have been learning more about plants. We did this simple experiment from Mr Q to simulate flower buds opening.

First we cut out some paper flowers.

Next we folded them up into buds.

Then we placed the "buds" into a bowl of water. As the flowers soaked up the water they slowly opened.

Egyptians

Today we had a go at making our own Egyptian chariots and some Egyptians to go with them. We had to use a bit of artistic licence with our materials as you can see.

Egyptian paper dolls and their clothes

Egyptian chariots

We got the cut out templates from our Everything Egypt project book. The chariot wheels were from Bunnings. 

Classifying Aliens

We have been finding out how scientist classify living things into groups. The children worked together to make this classification chart for some alien species.

All Fingers And No Thumbs

Today we were learning about primates. We did a great experiment to find out just how useful our opposable thumbs are. First we used masking tape to stick our thumbs to our palms so we couldn't use them. Next we tried various challenges without using our thumbs. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures as I too had my thumbs taped down. It was quite hilarious trying to put on our socks, pick up a coin, write our names or thread some beads without using our thumbs. We certainly appreciate them more than we did before.