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.