Funny paintings....

Today we started our new art project... Developed from something we dabbled in at a group we used to attend.

Each week we're looking at a different artist/painting technique, then we take elements of that style and create our own piece of art.

First up; Picasso. We looked at cubism and how 'funny' some of the portraits looked, with eyes and noses not in the normal places (again, another great project for understanding that you don't always have to do things the same way as everyone else does)

J decided he'd like to draw a spider, Picasso style.  We used bright colours and tried to replicate the use of two contrasting sides to the picture... A great attempt from J, who really wanted to paint the spider black, but compromised by using grey and adding some bright colours to the background.

Personally I love it :)

Thinking outside the box and other cliches...

I mentioned before that J is not that great at 'breaking the rules', and while that's commendable for most things, a little experimentation is a good thing.

We've done quite a bit of work on the great inventions/discovers of the world (Fleming, The Wright bros etc) as a prelude to this, and talked about how some inventions happened from just trying a different approach.

To help with this I bought a few books (okay all of them) by Keri Smith - I can't recommend her enough.  We've started with 'Wreck this journal'. Essentially the idea is that you use the book for all the things you're not supposed to use books for... Initially J wasn't convinced, but then he realised that sometimes these things can be fun too..!  

So far he's made muddy footprints in the book, scribbled madly, made finger paint marks (this was revolutionary for a child that doesn't like touching paint or paint on him) and even tried chewing paper (another ridiculously amazing breakthrough).. amongst other things.

Another book we've started is a pocket scavenger hunt, we look for everyday objects, like a stamp or a paper clip, and then make up a story about where it might have come from etc..  Great for using imagination.

I cannot praise the author of these books enough. And would thoroughly recommend them to anyone, but especially to children that can have a certain 'rigidity' to what they do, or have a strong reluctance to try new things.

Chinese New Year ... Almost...

We missed doing anything on CNY as we had other things planned, so took the opportunity at our weekly group to do some activities instead.

I had pre printed everyone's names in Chinese so we could look at how differently the letters are formed - they had fun trying to work out whose name was whose.

We also made some samurai warrior hats - making them as scary as possible to frighten our opponents..!

We also played a very fun game using chopsticks... Everyone had a plate of mint imperials, raisins and marshmallows - the rule was; if you could pick it up with the chopsticks, you could eat it.  I was amazed at how well they all did with this... Embarrassingly much better than I was..!

No Chinese New Year is complete without a dragon... we played 'catch the tail'; everyone lined up and held onto the person ion front... then the 'head' had to try and catch the tail... Yup, you guessed it ... ended up with everyone in a heap on the floor...

Eggs...!

By far my most favourite Tuesday group session so far... Today we looked at eggs...

We talked about how strong eggs are, and to demonstrate everyone had a go at trying to break an egg by squeezing it.  Then I got one of them to stand on an egg - guess what, it broke :) 

Now how about if I try and stand on twelve eggs..? 

Try to ignore the pink socks (it's a long story) but imagine the looks on their faces to see that none of the eggs broke ... I'll confess to some surprise myself.  Of course everyone wanted a go and they took turns in standing on eggs :)

We also looked at a transparent egg... Eggs that have been soaked in vinegar lose their shells and they end up looking quite cool.. I did two : one hard boiled and raw.

This the eggs in the vinegar.

Not only do they look cool, but the hard boiled version also bounces..! A bouncy egg...! 

We discovered that the raw egg also bounced a little... But not very well and quickly broke.

We looked at how to make an egg float, with the aid of a little salt.

And because up until now all the experiments had worked too well, we had to have one fail :) 

The classic suck a hard boiled egg into a bottle... Inspite of our best efforts this one just would not work - and we tried a lot...! One to revisit once I've figured out the problem I think...! 

So what can you do with a load of eggs once you finished experimenting...? Well, you can see what happens when you drop one :) 

Sometimes it's not about the science, but about having a go at things you normally can't do...

Treasure hunting

Last year we started treasure hunting... We use two things for this, the first being a Geocache device and the second a phone app called Munzi.

I have to admit, geocaching can be quite tricky... But of course when you find something it makes the thrill even bigger.  I think we looked for about 4/5 before we found our first one :

This was our first one that we found just before Christmas.  Sadly because of the continuing rain over the last couple of months we haven't had much chance to go this year... It looks like some nice weather has finally arrived though, which means out come the bikes :)

The Munzi app is pretty similar to GC, the difference being that you are just looking for a Q code rather than a canister of some sort.  There are literally hundreds of these everywhere, so we've made quite good progress with it.

The magic of ice...

To continue with our winter theme, this week we tried freezing a few things.

First up were some leaves (still hanging about from our autumn nature table)  We put some in a plant saucer and filled with water, then left the freezer to do it's thing.

This is how it ended up, sadly with all the rain we've had it didn't last long outside, it would have been nice to hang in the garden for a while.

We also made some ice lanterns.  A little trickier to do these as you need to have water in one bowl and then add a smaller bowl (to make the hollow) and then somehow not let these move in he freezer until they are frozen...  We kind of managed it, and from one side, with a lit candle in, it looked awesome 

Of course with a lit candle in, it didn't last long... but worth the effort. 

What have the Romans ever done for us..?

This week at Tuesday group: the Romans...

As usual a bit of a talk about what we know, where the Romans were from and some of their favourite pastimes (gladiators, lions etc..)

Then we turned our hands to pottery, by making salt dough pots.  Not one of J's favourites as it involves touching icky stuff, so he supervised my attempt instead..

We did however all have a go at making mosaics from paper, card and anything else we had to hand. I say mosaics, but I use the term rather loosely, I prefer 'creative interpretations'. 

They all had the free rain to make a mosaic of anything they wanted.. My J decided to do a paralysis tick... I love how this boy's mind works :)