End of the year

Thank you so much to all the parents who took the chance and faith to send their children to Art en Casa this past year. It's always a treat to meet new families, most of who are here on their very own South American adventure. I especially want to thank the parents who have been sending their children since I started all the way back in 2009. I hope most of you will still be here when I return. I will really miss you all !

un beso grande

Bella

Christmas part 2

So sadly this was the last week for Art en Casa for a while as after Christmas I will be away for 6 months on a travel adventure, experiencing life in Brazil and Costa Rica but I promise to be back. We played some fun Christmas games to finish off term, pin the nose on the Reindeer, and memory christmas cards. We also added to our festive crafts by making our very own stocking where the kids got to work on their threading skills. We made winter collagues with snowmen and Christmas tree and used lots of glitter which children always love. The children then finished off the class with a small gift which made then very happy especially the lollies.

Christmas part 1

I love Christmas craft time, it must be my favourite time of the year for making things because there is always so much to choose from. Here in Argentina people dont go so crazy with Christmas decorations or gifts so the only place to find any decoration is in the 'chino' shops and even they dont always have basic stuff like wrapping paper. So this year i thought it would be fun to make wreaths so at least the kids could have one to hang on their doors. I pre-cut out holed out circles which the kids painted green. Then they cut out lots of leaves and berries to cover it all up. We then made little standing Christmas trees which are super cute to have around the house.

The Desert

With the children growing up so fast and being able to focus for longer periods of time I have started to do more complicated projects with them. This 'making a desert scene' is lots of fun, looks great, but also takes time and focus. First the children draw with a pencil the dividing lines of the landscape. They then paint each with the correct colour and before the paint dries etch in patterns into the paint to give it more depth and texture. While they wait for the landscapes to dry they can then work on making a sun, snake, cactus and camel. These are drawn, cut out, painted and finally stuck on. The end result as you can see is really great !

Numbers

The past few weeks I have been using the first 10 minutes of class to work on numbers with the children. Most of them will know their numbers 0 to 10 but after that they start to mix them up a bit. So what I do is have large flash cards with the numbers written on them. I get the children to pick them out and order them onto a 'washing line' . I then play a game where they have to shut their eyes then I will take away a number and they must tell me which one is missing. Today I then had a sheet of numbers all mixed up which they had to cut out and stick in the correct order.

Thanks Giving

With Thanks Giving coming up this Thursday I thought it would be a fun story to do. I started by telling the children about the story of the 100 English who had sailed to America on the Mayflower boat. How when they arrive at this new land in the cold of winter they had no food to eat. But luckerly for them some indians came to their help teaching them how to grow their own crops. Thanks Giving comes from the meal they made from all their crops that grew which they then shared with the Indians in thanks. We started with making the boats the pilgrims sailed on. We then drew round our feet and hands to make a Turkey. Lastly made a circle with all the things we where thankful for in our lives. Felix was thankful for his mum dad and TV ;]

Sea Life

Last week I decided it was time to visit a Sea topic as there is always so much one can do with this. Using nice thick card as our base we used crate paper to make the sea and then painted a sky. We made boats using thick card and added a sun and clouds. After using toilet rolls we made Octopuses cutting along the roll for legs and then after the paint had dried added a face.

Halloween

What must be mine and Henrys' favourite time of the year Halloween ! I love doing Halloween in class because I know that here in Argentina they dont really celebrate it but my ex pat kids love the chance to create scary stuff. We painted little flower pots orange and drew on scary faces, inside I put a tea candle so the children could have their own pumpkin lantern. We made hanging pumkins with crate paper which when hung up in the window seem to shin light. With old toilet rolls we made bats and added little faces.

I did not have a chance to add photos from last week so here was one of our fruit faces. Also to let you know we have been working a great deal with letters these past few weeks. I have the children order the letters of the alphabet using large flash cards. Then I have a picture starting with each sound that they have to place on top of each letter. These association games are good and easy to do whole class and gets the children to think more about sounds and letters.

Robots

We had great fun making Robots last week, I also used it as an opportunity to teach the children about Shapes. We drew a big robot with the children choosing which shape should be used for each body part. They then cut out shapes to put together to make their own robot. To finish off we used lots of recycled bits to make 3D robots. An old box was covered with tin foil and bubble rap, then faces and arms where added on.

Exotic Animals

Animals always leaves you with many great art projects to work on. I started the class having the children match up the first letter of an animal with its picture. The children mostly recognise the letters from their own names but are slowly able to sound out a few more. We then used toilet rolls to make tall giraffes [ http://dltk-kids.com/animals/mgiraffe.html] and cut round animal templates to make a jungle collage.

Planets

Looking at Planets is great fun as its something children are always fascinated with. We started the class seeing which planets the children knew, Earth and Mars seem to be the two they always remember. We looked at the rest counted how many there are then put them in order from the sun recognising the smallest and biggest ones. After ordering and labelling their Planets the children painted a big Earth and hung an astronaut and space ship off it to make a mobile hanger. We finished making a Space picture with rockets and stars, lots of glitter and shiny paper.

Up in the Sky

With lovely sunny spring days upon us I thought it would be nice to stare up at the endless blue skies and see what is up there. So this week we looked at 'things in the sky' , the children told me everything they had seen in the sky, clouds, stars, rain, kites, .... which we drew and labelled on the big white board. The children then coloured, cut stuck and label the different things. We then used some of our recycled boxes to make planes and finished off making kite in the sky with cotton wool clouds. [ http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/mkite.html]

Welcome to two new students Elizabeth and Michael ;]

New term Spring Time

It was so nice to finally get back to Buenos Aires to the sunshine and my beautiful home. I have managed to avoid winter once again and arrive just in time for the start of Spring. This is why I thought a Spring time topic would work well to make the kids aware of the changing seasons. We looked out of the window and discussed what changes we can see in nature and how each season has different things to look out for. I had the children label different parts of a tree to work on letter recognition. We then made our own standing trees and used crate paper to make giant flowers. It was so great to have all the children back and I am so looking forward to this last term.

Married !

So after having left you all for the Argentine winter I can happerly confirm that me and Jose did finaly marry in Tuscany this August. Now reality slowly seeps back and I will be returning to Buenos Aires to start classes the week of September 12th.

Looking forward to seeing all the children again and some new faces I hope !

Family Trees

Last week we made our own family trees. We wrote out on the big white board the names of everyone in each family then the children could copy them onto an apple. A tree was painted and the apples stuck on to create family trees. We also did some collage work by sticking crate paper on a board to create waves and added fish on top.

The Body

Looking at the human body is always a great one for key vocab. I have this big hanging body I like to put up for these kind of classes. The body parts are written on post its and the kids can go and pick them off or use them to copy the names for their own hanging bodies. We also found time to make funny faces putting a range of silly features into an empty face. The song 'Head and Shoulders' is of course also a fun way to help the kids remember the different parts of their bodies.

Australia

We took out the map this week and found Australia. Looking at countries is always a fun thing to do with both children and teenagers, even now I love looking at a map. I asked the kids which countries they knew or had visited. We located them on the world map and then went on to search for the largest and smallest counties in the world. We talked about the animals that lived in Australia and of course the main one we linked was the Kangaroo. I then showed the children some aboriginal paintings of animals and explained that we would try and copy them with our own 'dot' painting. I had made animal shapes for them to draw around then they just had to fill them in with dots. We also made a turtle puzzle with pieces being cut out and stuck down.

Rainforest

This week we looked at rainforest and the creatures that live in them. Most of the kids had never been to a rainforest so we had answers like pigs and elephants ;] We used the internet to have a look at pictures of the rainforests and tried spotting the different animals hiding among the green. We decided on making a hanging butterfly, free drawing a Toucan and coloring in a large parrot.
Welcome to Felipe and Maite who started this week !

Dinosaurs

After the children had worked so hard with their writing these past few weeks I decided we needed to have some carefree fun making Dinosaurs. We where able to recycle egg boxes, toothpaste packs and light bulb boxes to make 3D dinosaurs with lolli pop sticks as their legs.
After this we used clay to model different types of dinos which we will paint this coming week when they are dried. Lastly the children had to cut out and puzzle together dinosaur bones to make a picture.

Animal Farm

With the children growing so fast I have decided that it is a good time to introduce a bit of handwriting to the art classes. Along with just learning vocab I would like them to start to recognize letters and write key words. This week we started with Farm Animals. I had the children match up animal names written on post- its to the pictures. They then got to make an animal farm and had to copy the names of each animal onto the back of their own picture. At this age children tend to know just the letters in their own name so as much practice as possible with all letters is encouraged. If they find it too hard writing for the first time you can start with having them trace over the letters you have written for them.

Happy Easter

Easter is always a time to get nice and creative so we had plenty to keep us busy this week. We made bunnies from toilet rolls, trees covered in eggs as is traditional in Austria and Germany [ http://projects.ajc.com/gallery/view/travel/intdestinations/easter-egg-tree/] and baskets to put eggs in. The baskets where just made from decoration a sheet of plain A4 card and then making two cuts down each end, bringing the sides together to staple. After you add a handle made from colored card adding crape paper flowers. For the inside I have the kids cut up strips of green paper to look like grass.
We have had 5 new students join us in the last 2 weeks so welcome to Cash, Maria Fernanda, Felix, Sophie, and Lucia.