Term 1 round up.

We are winding up first term here. We are trying a five term year and doing eight week terms as I find I am usually a bit burnt out by eight weeks and we are all ready for a break. Even though I have not been getting online to blog about our art activities this term we have still been doing them, we have been covering the impressionists and I have been using a mixture of resources to teach the boys. We have been continuing on with Discovering Great Artists and we have also been using Monet and the Impressionists

MonetWe did some fun activities for Monetone of them was a reflectionand the other a cloudscape
Renoirtime for some drawing
faces

Degas
oil pastel resists to show motion

Mary CassatIt was nice to finally do a woman so we did a mini unit on her and Mr11 did some lapbooking into his art journal.Mr6 needed to do some lapbooking as well so he did some art words.

When we did Gaugin the boys loved the fact he sailed around to different countries and we talked about how that must have made such huge impressions on himas he did a lot of his images outlined in black,
we 'drew' our pictures with pva on black paperand when they were dry we coloured them in with oil pastels.I love oil pastels on black.
Mr11 being 'assisted' by Miss Emerald

Cezanne

This was our still life a la Cezanne
Mr6 carefully selecting his water colours
Mr11 loving his own new water colour set.

SeuratIt was fun and fascinating learning about Pointillismwe tried various different dot applications

Calliabette
simply because Mr11 loves this pictureParis Street, Rainy Day

Van Gough

One on my favourites
Mr11 did Sunflowers
and Mr6
and I did Starry starry night.

We have all really enjoyed our journey through art history.

On our 2 week break we are going to Canberra to the National Gallery to see the French Masterpieces - Yippee.

Next term although the boys have begged to do art again, I think 2 terms in a row are enough for a while and we will be doing a study on earth sciences.

In the Garden

Mr6 found a little friend last night

Just after a downpour,
we could hear all his friends calling
from the garden so we went for a wander

whilst the pasta bake cooked in the bbqOne of Miss Ems friends was in the bird feeder,
the birds were all over the garden
enjoying the cool refreshing change after all the heat.The sweet potato patch was looking very happy
just don't look at that pesky onion grass
some herbs in the herb spiralthese beautiful fragrant blossoms
are on Mr11s lemonade treeThis is the garden the boys and I made for Daddy
to welcome him home from Uni after 2nd year.
some new babies coming on.
Baby pumpkins, baby corn and
a lovely little baby gardener
Mr6 helped plant the seeds.some chooks in the chook dome
working hard in the garden Mr6 being followed by his little shadow
on some of our garden paths.
These paths have worked really well
they are just newspaper laid on top
of the grass covered generously with sawdust
and have lasted about a year
- its time to re do them now.
and as we wander back
up to check on dinner,
one last look back over the garden

Clarence Valley Wanderings

Life has been so busy here this year.

We had no Internet for a month
and it is proving very difficult
to get back into a routine online.
So my blog and my much loved forums
The Rockpool Homeschool
and Liberated Learning
are sadly taking a back seat at the moment.
Now that we have broadband,
the boys are spending hours online!
Mr11 is doing year 7 on Skwirk
just to fill in any gaps I might have left out.
Mr6 is still doing Reading Eggs
and also has a Skwirk subscription
so the computer is working hard.

We have been out and about
We took a trip to Angourie for World Wetlands DayVisiting both Blue Pool and Green Pool.The boys were thrilled to spot some Brolga's
in a harvested cane field just south of LawrenceThey flew right over usWe have been having so much rainsince we watched Mary Poppins
walks under umbrellas,
have been very popular,
often accompanied by a tune.

chim chiminey ....
and the sky has been magical.