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!

Calendar

Last year I made a little board with the days of the week and months of the year on it in English and French for us to familiarise ourselves with.

It worked well but very quickly so that Lamb tired of it.

When I saw the idea for this interactive calendar at counting coconuts I knew it would be great for us.

So here is our version...

Again we have the months of the year and days of the week in English and French (I recycled the cards), we do the weather each day and I popped some season pictures up.

What the children really love is the popsicle sticks with 'today', 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday' on them. I am hoping it will help them not to get so mixed up about when things happened! 

The date on the monthly calendar can obviously change each month as I just pull out the push pins and rearrange the laminated numbers and for a marker for the day, I took an old key ring, wrapped it in embroidery cotton and attached a button (I happened to have little red stars in my sewing kit)

Voila! And so far they love it!

Setting up for 2012

Seeing as this is the year that Silas would be attending four year old kindergarten, I decided that I might spruce up the children's area of operations.

Until now they have more or less sat at the dining room table to do activities with Mummy or on the lounge floor with their mats and things from their shelves.

Unfortunately we don't have space to have all of their school things together so the shelves will stay in the lounge but when a friend handed down a little kids table and chairs, Mummy got to work.

I gave the table and chairs a paint job so that they were fresh and white on the surfaces the children would use (they came with a bright blue Winnie the Pooh pattern which I thought might be distracting).

Then I sewed the little book bags for the backs of their chairs.

I involved the children in the process in that we went to the fabric shop together and the children chose which fabric they would like.

They are SO easy to make.

You simply cut and pin the pocket together and then the extra  piece of fabric for over the back of the chair gets pinned on too. I got all the seams together with a little adjusting here and there and the iron so that everything sat flat then I sewed ONCE around the edge of the entire thing holding it all together!

Once I bought some new pens and the tins the children were BUSY for days getting their scrapbooks out of their pockets and sharing their new pens, discussing what they were drawing.

It is so great for Cherry to have an area to get busy whenever she wants to and Lamb never wants to! But now that it's there, he too has been busy drawing away! YAY!

The display on the wall is from the Ready to Read units by the moffat girls which we have been using (they really are great), and I even have room just behind them to set up our chalkboard so that I can play teacher....their new calendar is there also....