Monet

While on a trip to get new books from the library we came across a story about a little girl that steps inside the paintings of Monet and then does a rendition of one of his paintings herself.

Both children really took to it so, being a Montessorian, I printed out the Monet cards I had on file and popped them on the shelf.

Then we relived Katie's experience and did a Monet of our own!

Both children were up with the play with this idea and had an idea of which art work they wanted to imitate. Their decisions were different from each other too which really surprised me, I though perhaps Cherry would just follow her brother.

Here they are on a wet and rainy afternoon creating their masterpieces.

They painted for a half hour solid, discussing what colours they would use for each thing.

While Cherry's was a little difficult to disect, Lamb had a flowing blue stream and upside down heart shapes for lilypads upon which were little pink flowers. I painted with them and he was asking me how I did my shrubs. I showed him the circular brush strokes which is what he was trying to achieve in the top left of his painting.

I loved doing this with them!

Rainbow activities

The winkles and I have been having fun with rainbows so far...

Lamb and I painted a rainbow together

The whole way through he kept saying, "I really enjoy painting with you Mum"...NOTE: do this MUCH more often.

Once we had finished painting it, we turned it into a colour matching exercise for Cherry.

And then to jazz up snack time today, I set the winkles to chopping...

and then arranged everything in rainbow form...

Pink (watermelon), Purple (sultanas and craisins), Blue (blueberries...the best I could think of, the Winkles were satisfied with the explanation that they are called BLUE berries), Green (Avocado and broccoli), Yellow (Banana and Cheese), Orange (Bbq rice crackers and carrot sticks) and Red (Strawberries).

They both got such a kick out of this and sat there happily munching away on a really random combination of foods, some of which they won't usually eat.

How great!

We also made a rainbow cake (not so healthy)

And with all the colour action I set up a colour mixing activity for Lamb

I put red, yellow and blue food colouring in three polystyrene cups that I cut the top off to make child sized then Lamb used an eye dropped to mix the right amount of colour in to make green, orange and purple.

That wasn't enough though so...

I drew pencil circles on a sheet of baking paper and blu tacked that to a cookie tray (I think this activity idea is from John Bowman's ebook....and Lamb used the eye dropper to squeeze the colours onto the dots.

He hasn't done this activity before so, as you can see, some dots were huge and others not so much but he spent a good twenty five minutes filling a couple of sheets of dots!

The Grampians

  Our family recently spent a week 'hiking' in The Grampians.

The children really enjoyed waking up to kangaroos outside our windows each morning, searching for lizards in every bush and rock and walking.

They love to walk!

Lamb and Cherry throwing rocks into Lake Wartook (family pastime!) and my husband helping Lamb across the rocks at Mackenzie falls (Yes, my heart was in my mouth, the waterfall is literally right behind them)

Lamb insisted upon taking his backpack in order to be just like Daddy and Cherry seemed to do better on the more challenging walks. She seemed to get bored on the easier walks and then ask to be carried.

We decided it would be great to make a sport...extreme picnicing.

The children here are perched on a rockface bordering beehive falls having a lemon and barley drink!

Amidst the remains of bush fires many months before

Possibly the highlight was coming across this shingleback crossing the road. Lamb greeted him in 'lizard fashion' (note the tongue)

When we came home we thought it would be fun to make a book about all the animals we saw on our adventures.



  

Run Hare Run!

We recently found this book at the library and the children have really enjoyed reading it. Books are often the spark for learning activities in our house so when I suggested to Lamb that he do a brown hare like Durer, he was excited!

I sketched an outline for him to follow and we discussed the direction of the brush strokes then I set him up in the sun with the book for a reference and away he went...

When he finished I went over the outline in paint to make it clearer.

Away in Cobram

So my husband has a big job to do here in Cobram, country Victoria and rather than be separated for two months the winkles and I have come along too.

It was very difficult to pack! Especially for activities for the children so we have made do with the bag of things I brought from home and a few things we have picked up along the way.

We have been for walks along the Murray River and around lake Mulwala as well as visiting the Barooga gardens.

My winkles love to walk and everywhere we go we collect things...seed pods, rocks and sticks so why not an art project....

I popped Lamb in the sun and we came up with this....

Kids love water!!!

Primary and Secondary colours

I found this great idea for introducing colour blending!

You can check it our here.

First make a batch of play dough with the three primary colours.

I printed out a picture of a colour wheel as a control from here.

Then mix the primary colours (Note: little hands get fatigued very quickly here)

To create a completed colour wheel!

Matisse's Snail Trail

We found this book at the library and Lamb loves it!

It's available at Amazon Books.

 I printed off some Matisse art cards from 'Montessori Print Shop' to go with it.

And we did our own collage snail!

Lamb cut all of his own pieces of paper and glued them into position.