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.

Africa

As the weeks fly by I am finding it harder coming up with new topics so this week I just went with a whole continent , Africa. From the huge range of African craft ideas I came across in books and the internet I decided on masks, monkey and lions. We had great fun making the masks. First the kids had to cut out all the different parts of the face, mouth, eyes, eyebrows ect and stick them down. Then they painted the entire face brown and once it had dried used cotton buds with white paint to add decoration to their masks. We also had some drums to make but sadly ran out of time.

Starry Night

This weeks theme was inspired from Van Goghs Starry Night painting. We had a look at what goes on at night time, what is in the sky and what creatures come out at night time. Owls seemed to be a fun topic to work on so we printed some onto dark purple paper using old tea towels cut to owl shape and stuck onto a piece of card. We then added legs, eyes and beaks.