Sadly we have come to the end of the school year and Art en Casa. The past year has really been so much fun for me, Caro [ our teaching assistant] and the children. They have created many great works of art but more than anything have had fun doing it and become firm friends.
With Christmas fast approaching its that time of year when you get to make really fun festive crafts. It always takes me back to when I was child and I find myself so happy making the same kinds of things I was doing 25 years ago ! With it being so hot this time of year its hard to imagine a traditional Christmas that's why its so fun to make very traditional things. This last week we have made Christmas cards, trees, snow men and angels. I hope all these things will give the children a feeling of a old fashioned cold winter !
With so many American children coming to Art en Casa we decided this week to celebrate Thanks Giving. It was a great chance to get the children to think of all the things that made them happy and they could say Thank You for. They now all know what a turkey is as we made quite a few ! We used our hands to print them, colored some in and make a turkey hats with the older kids. 
Young children always love making animals so this week we did just that. Using brown paper bags we make puppet elephants. The younger children are still working on their cutting skills so cutting out the different parts for the elephant was hard work for them. Next we made a 3D fish.
This week we had a go at Van Goghs' Bedroom. We talked about what we could see and the colors he used. Then children started off by having to piece together the picture like a puzzle. Once all the parts where stuck in place they began to paint trying to copy the colors from the original picture. We where left with real master pieces !
A great way to recycle old yogurt pots is to make these Halloween lanterns. Just cover them in orange crate paper add scary eyes and mouth and finish by slipping in a small tea light. We made these at the end of last class as sadly this weeks 'Halloween' class was canceled due to the national Census day.
We had so much fun making these guitars last week. They sounded really good even though some got squashed in the excitement ! Everything was made using recycled bits then brightened up with crate paper. I think in the future we will look to making many more instruments.
This week we had another go at creating art like the masters. This week we looked at Andy Warhol who was famous for being in the Pop Art movement. One of his specialties was producing a commercial image over and over again, so we went with Micky Mouse. The kids of course loved Micky and had to focus hard to keep the different colors apart. After that they got to get dirty with some hand painting which always goes down with much laughter.
The last 2 weeks saw a mixture of work being produced. Orlando used chalk to create a Galaxy and even though everything in my house became covered in a thin layer of chalk it was well worth it. The smaller ones had fun making masks and mixing Autumn colors to paint leaves which will then be cut out and stuck onto a tree. We also produced lovely Van Gogh paintings which much to my distraught where lost in transit of camera ;[.
I had acquired quite a few toilet rolls lately so thought the best way to put them to good use was to turn them into giraffes. The task was simple just adding a head and painting everything yellow and sticking on brown squares but the result is a really fun toy for the children to play with long after they have finished the art project.
I wanted the younger children to also have the chance to create a 'master piece' so looking through my art books I came to Kandinsky. His work is abstract and therefor can be copied by young children. The focus of his work was to enable color to express feelings. The children really enjoyed creating the colored circles and then had to focus hard to keep each square a different color.
We are constantly working on letter recognition with the children so spelling out simple words through art is alway a good way to make learning this fun. Here the children had to spell out Flower and then got to use crate paper to make some flowers. We also looked at African animals this week creating among other things a tiger piggy bank.
Coming close to the end of our term with only 2 weeks till the 'winter ' holidays we are still very busy being creative. We made sun necklaces and Panda bears. The bears where made using 2 paper plates painted white. Then after going over the vocab for the parts of the body we stuck everything down.
The younger kids got to make crocodiles this last week. We used simple brown paper bags painting them green. Then teeth, eyes and noses had to be added. The smallest children are working on their cutting skills which is still a real challenge to them.
The boys finaly finished their robots which we have been working on the past 2 weeks. They started them by using recycled boxes then covered them in paper mache. After they had spent a week drying we where able to paint them and add extra bit like bottle tops and tin foil.
Despite the heavy rains we managed to have a really fun week. With the little ones we learned all about fruit naming them and their colors. We looked at real fruit and then had to label and paint our own using our fingers. The children by the end of the session could name at least 5 different fruit and where very pleased. We also found time to make some owls, painting them brown then adding beaks and eyes using buttons. Finlay we added some color to the wings with cut out colored pager
2010 Art en Casa has really taken off with 3 out of the 4 classes being filled to maximum.
I have been busy running around organizing the new classes, thinking up art projects and meeting with parents and students. Now after over a week of classes and having hired an assistant I am beginning to find a good rhythm and am able to really enjoy getting to know the new students and seeing how creative and hard working they all are.
Welcome to all of you who have joined this year, I know that we are going to have a really great time and produce some wonderful things.
