Catch up in photographs

Here's Lamb's interpretation of Dali ;)

...and Moo's.

We've been doing LOTS of baking...

We've started a Gruffalo literacy unit. There's some great stuff on the TES website (you have to join to access it but it is free to sign up) and I had to share this funky drawing of the Gruffalo. If you know Lamb personally you'll know why this is such an awesome drawing for him! We've been doing story sequencing and focusing on describing the gruffalo.

We've also start another topic at the same time, on Planes. This is Lamb's drawing of a plane. Cockpit, wings, tail, and everything.

...and I really must get better at this whole blogging thing...

Catching up

It has been a slow week for us. We've all been ill, and the fact that Lamb's medication is no longer helping him has been taking its toll on us and our 'work'. Not much has been done!

Lamb has been teaching Moo to navigate the Cbeebies website. Lamb showed some considerable patience while doing this, and was more than happy to be the teacher for a change. Moo has gotten very confident in the short time he has been using the computer. Already his fine motor skills have mastered the art of clicking on small boxes, he knows how to find 'play' buttons and 'back' buttons. He is now desperate to master the skill of using the arrow keys to play the simple games on the Cbeebies website, which is what Lamb is attempting to teach him here.

We've made a small start on our 'Electricity and Power Sources' unit this week, and have started by finding different light sources in and out of the house. The boys have also been investigating which of their toys use batteries, and both of them are already great at locating where the batteries go.

Moo has started on the road of beginning to read in earnest. I was concerned that maybe it was too soon... A chat with NemNem sorted that out and she set my mind at ease. In the words of the sage: 'If he's hungry then feed him.' Excellent advice :-) So Moo was left eagerly awaiting his new books so he can learn to read. We chose the BBC 'Fun with Phonics' pack and have started on the 'Sounds and Letters' pack.

This comes with an animated dvd which Moo loves, a work book and giant poster. The picture quality of the dvds isn't great, but it is bright and kid friendly, and the pack comes in a handy folder to keep everything together. We also ordered a couple of the new Phonics Bug Alphablocks books to see if they were any good. These are very short, very simple, but also very clear. Moo loves these even more than the Fun With Phonics pack, and I have to say that I have high hopes for the Phonics Bug books, enough that I think that Moo will be getting some more of them for Christmas.

We have already started on phonics, but only half heartedly really, and using the free jolly phonics printable flashcards available on the Communication4All website, as this is what Lamb used when learning sounds. However Moo was reliant on the pictures and without them wasn't able to recognise the letter.

Today after only half an hour of watching his new dvd and reading through the alphablocks books together Moo is now finding both the letters 'a' and 's' within text. I'm rather impressed!

We've also started looking at our new artist with this wonderful book called 'The Magical Garden of Claude Monet' by Laurence Anholt. In this lovely book a little girl goes to meet her mother's friend, Mr. Monet where she sees both his garden and his paintings. The illustrations are lovely and actually incorporate Monet's famous paintings into the illustrations. For young children it's a wonderful introduction to the artist.

We've also been working on making paper mache bird feeders, but these are still work-in-progress! Right now the pva glue (intended to make them water proof at least for a little while) is drying, and hopefully the boys will remember some of our conversations while making them about why it is especially important to help the birds through the winter.

Fingers crossed next week will be a little more productive.

Sculpting blind

We've finally come to the end of our time looking at Georgia O'Keeffe.

Towards the end of her life O'Keeffe's sight began to fail her and she turned more to sculpting.

To emphasise this point the boys attempted to make some models blindfold.

Neither much liked the experience of not being able to see what they were doing. Lamb lasted only a few minutes before he could stand it no longer, though Moo actually asked to be blindfold again later in the day to play with the blindfold :-)

They both got the point though, and found it much harder when they couldn't see what they were doing.

More than any of the art they have done thus far this little exercise has really ingrained the name 'Georgia O'Keeffe' into their minds.

There is a lovely free 'festivals of light' printable available on this winter's edition of 'Rhythm of the Home',

intended for use to make a little booklet. The kids used this to get in some good pencil control practise and scissor skills practise, which both of them need to work on, while we talked about the Winter Solstice and the various celebrations at this time of year.

Instead of making little booklets, the kids made some banners to hang on the wall using reflective baking foil

- which included a little bit of scientific discussion on why some things are shiny :-)

Now they are both desperate to start getting the Christmas decorations put up!

Salt dough angels and more Georgia O'Keeffe

We're coming to the end of our time looking at Georgia O'Keeffe's work. Moo is the real art lover, Lamb can take it or leave it. Today we had a look at some of Georgia O'Keeffe's bone pictures again, and looked at some more photos of O'Keeffe throughout her life. The boys then had the opportunity to get really messy and had a go at drawing some duck bones with charcoal sticks. Lamb wanted to post his off to Georgia O'Keeffe for her to see and I had to explain why that wasn't going to be possible.

Get messy they most certainly did!

Getting into the Christmas spirit again, today we made angels using salt dough. The boys wanted to make some angels we could hang from the ceiling so we made their heads hollow to put ribbon through. Before the little angels went into the oven to dry out we made the holes in the back to insert their wings afterwards.

And then came the glitter... an explosion of glitter, quite literally (the tops flew off the glitter shakers)!!

As we had some of the salt dough left over and lots of glitter to clear up we combined the two and the boys used the cookie cutters to make some sparkly star decorations to go on the tree when it finally goes up.

All in all a rather peaceful day (I suspect that the lack of any numeracy work might have something to do with that!!).

Georgia O'Keeffe's poppies

On Friday we kept the 2 minutes silence, and Lamb was very sincere about the whole thing. As the last of our poppy related arts 'n' crafts we took a look at Georgia O'Keeffe's beautiful 'Oriental Poppies' painting, and the boys had a go at recreating the picture.

Here is the tracing I made of the picture for the boys to work with as a guide.

Here is Lamb's interpretation with water colour pencils....

... and here is Moo's version of the same :)

Georgia O'Keeffe inspired

As we're doing a body topic at the moment we've taken the opportunity to look at some of Georgia O'Keeffe's bone paintings. Moo particularly loves our art time looking at famous artists. Lamb, as you can see in the picture is taking his art very seriously, but is far more interested in his art than some old artist!

Yesterday I laid out a series of different arty activities for the boys and miraculously they had both suddenly finished what they were doing. In this picture Lamb decided to use chalks to draw bones 'with clouds in the sky'. Moo also took the opportunity to paint the floor, which is why all our art time takes place on the lino!

As well as various bone based activities there I also laid out some materials to make autumn crowns, which are still drying as so much glue was used! The kids then took it all to the next level. Leaves we painted and stuck onto bone paintings, they both demanded scissors and before I knew it they had created leafy, black snowflakes... or something like that!