Vermeer

We have been looking at some beautiful works by Vermeer today.
I found a wonderful lens on Squidoo
and these are our efforts

Heat Wave

It was an absolute scorcher in Grafton yesterday.

Luckily we had the opportunity to spend the day at the pool

and the boys took advantage of the water slide with hardly any other kids around.

Carl Linnaeus

Another fascinating man today.
Carl Linnaeus.
"The Father of Taxonomy"

His fascination for and love of nature was evident.
He made an in depth study of plants and animals
and devised the system of naming, ranking and classification we still use today.-Genus species.

Linnaeus gave names to and concise descriptions of 7,700 plant species and 4,400 animals,
he designated humans as Homo sapiens.

Linnaeus was an inspirational and influential man and has a society in London
named after him who have been cultivating the Science of Natural History in all its branches for 200 years.

We are looking at his botanical drawings and the high level of observation and accuracy used for scientific records.
We are also enjoying learning about so many amazing people, the boys convesations are peppered with new phrases and thoughts, yesterday at the pool they were wondering haw Leonardo or Michelangelo might have designed the water slide.

The boys both started with some sunflowers
Mr10 moved on to a weed
and Mr6 chose a fishbone fernIn our web wanderings today we came across a lovely site about tree farming- REAL TREES 4 kids and it has some great information and activities, divided into years and a section for teachers as well. It is also relevant for christmas trees.

Rembrandt Portraits

We really concentated on looking at the shadows-looking at the light and painting it brighterand looking at the dark and painting it.We used acrylics today
and we didn't worry about getting it right,
we just worked on the light and dark

Rembrandt

When we looked at Rembrandt we most enjoyed his delicate sketches

in sepia, sanguine, charcoal and white.

We loved his lions and elephants and his childrenMr6 loved his philistines in shiny helmets.
My darling Mr6 is very much enjoying his collection of dress ups at the moment and I never know quite who will greet me when he comes out of his bedroom.

El Greco

This Greek born painter was most famous in Spain.

We loved his atmospheric landscapes like View of Toledo
but we were most inspired by his long tall figures
and thought it might be time for some collage.(sorry about the sideways view of Mr10)

Michelangelo

Wow,
we are learning about some truly amazing and inspiring men at the moment
- perfect role models for my boys.

The wonderful Michelangelo has amazed us with his stunning sculptures and paintings. Mr10 is most impressed by the diversity of talents and skills mastered.

My boys are used to their mad mother and her 'weird' requests ;-)
so I asked them to climb under the table and paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

They could feel some of the challenges faced by Michelangelo in the four years plus that he took to paint the chapel. Paint dripping onto them, the difficulty of holding up your arm and looking after palettes and water jars. I use old shower curtains as messy mats for all the messy activities we do inside, we have 3 of them and they are so handy, I can just peg them onto the clothes line and hose them off when they get dirty. It was also a lot of fun as they lay there painting listening to me read them a book about Michelangelo's life.Mr10 chose to do a mother and child,
oh and can you tell he is rather fond of castles?

Albrecht Durer

When we started looking at this great German artists works we were really amazed at his prints.

His Rhinoceros is marvelous.
His wood block print were so delicate and the shading so beautiful.
We thought we would like to try making some prints of our own.
Unfortunately I didn't have any suitable pieces of wood we could carve into so we used some of the stack of foam trays we get from the supermarket when we buy packaged meat. They worked wonderfully well. We could 'carve' into them using a pen or pencil, and a few more of the larger ones were perfect for printing trays, one to hold the ink and one to apply the in to our printing plate (carved meat tray) and a final one to use to hold our paper in to print onto.

Leonardo da Vinci

Continuing on our journey through the Renaissance years
we have been busy doing lots of art and lots of swimming in the hot weather we have been experiencing.

I gave the boys a free choice when it came to Leonardo,
Mr10 built some of Leonardo's amazing machines.

They both chose to do a copy of the Mona Lisa

Mr6 wanted to use his watercolours and I think he did a fabulous job all on his own.

Mr10 is much more a traditionalist so chose to use his oils.He looks rather comfortable here mixing up his colours.

We loved learning about Leonardo and spent a full week,
he was such an amazing man.

The New Pool

It has been so hot here and that has inspired up to put up our new little pool.The groung looks pretty level but actually had quide a drop
so we needed to even it up

It is a set and fill one- relatively quick and easy and bargain priced.
Dad is a bargain hunter and got it last year on special at the end of summer
we saw it recently for $300 more than what DH paid.

We have had smaller set and fill pools before and wanted to set this one up in a more managle way. It needed a solid base that was level and we made ours with sand. We used weedmat on the bottom a flexible solid plastic garden edge and topped our pad with the groundsheet that came with the pool and folded the weedmat over the top.
In theory this will minimise the sand getting into the pool, allow the water to freely drain away and allow the lawn mower and whipper snipper to be used right beside the pool. We are considering pavers or maybe some type of pebbles over the weedmat in the future.The whole family worked together to get it done.
Our dog Reiley was supervisorMiss Em found a nice high spot to keep an eye on things
Once the pad was all finished the rest was relatively quick and easy.
Laying out the pool on the pad
Inserting the poles that make up the frame
sitting nicely on our new pad
ready to fill
filling it up

Mr10 is pretty keen to test the waters.

We have some shade sails that we will put up over the pool and will need to tidy up the ground surface as well but we were all in it yesterday afternoon and it is going to be hot again today.
I can see a long hot summer with lots of cooling off in the pool in our future.

Botticelli

This early renaissance artist lived and worked in Florence.

Whilst reading about Sandro Botticelli we noticed he did a lot of round paintings, so we did too.