round up

It's starting to feel a bit like every blog post is just a round up of my instagram photos for the week (or two); apologies to those who would like to see something different here,  but it's all I have to share right now.

Firstly, I am very glad to say that I was able to work on my Monkeys at mural painting this week.  Remember this?  Yes, well this was courtesy of a group of kids who were dropped off at our mural painting weekend with no parental supervision (for the second time).  We have a lot of repair work to do thanks to those kids.  My friend called these two muskrat and beaver after they'd had the special treatment...

 But now they are mostly back to how they were intended...and the background will be green bushes (that's the base coat) rather than water....

 Feeling much better about those...

My kindergarten kids have been working on making African animal masks.  We've been looking at African art, drawing African animals (and talking about which animals live in Africa) and watching some of the lion king stage show.  Their Unit is music and movement and they will perform an African song in these masks.  It's a slow process, but coming together really nicely and they are so invested in them.

 First I drew out some templates of various animals for them.  They got to choose which animal they wanted.

Then they coloured them.  This is a good example of the range of skill level.  Some did amazing African designs (none here).  And actually, at this point I did a bit of an assessment.  

I cut them out and stuck them to card (I should have printed them on card stock) and then this week they've been sticking on paper and plastic raffia and pipe cleaners etc to make them really nice and add some decorative elements.   Bit of a full on lesson as I really wanted them to take artistic control of their work and there was glue, masking tape etc flying everywhere.  I really can't wait to take some photos of them decorated, but I left them to dry in the classroom and I just didn't have time to take any photos during the lesson.

 Grade 4's did this fun little exercise as part of their unit on Artists as explorers looking at 3 art movements: impressionism, cubism and pop art.  This was my example for them, but they came up with some really interesting and creative stuff. It was nice to do a pop art project that wasn't Andy Warhol.

 We had a lovely lunch with friends at their house last weekend.  Good food, a proper turn table with records and a dog.  Kit was very happy to have a dog to play with and has decided he wants a turn table for his birthday.

 Then this week at school we had our international fiesta; 2 days of celebrating the various cultural heritage of our school.

  This was one of the Kazakstani dresses...

 This was a Russian one.

  There was singing and dancing and then on Friday the parade of nations where there were 61 different countries represented.

Friday night we went out (just Kit, Ella, Matt and I - Remi was out with friends celebrating the end of his mock exams).  Poor Kit and his leg.  We found out last week that he has AT LEAST another 5 weeks with it on, possibly longer.  5 weeks takes us up to the week before we go to Tasmania for a week, so we're crossing all fingers and toes.

 He's a trooper though, and super speedy on his crutches.  Great to get out with him.  And always nice to get out at night in Singapore.