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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This week we went under water with some fish fun. Making all kinds of fish is always a great topic as there are so many ways to make a fish ! We made a fish collage using shiny papers, painted our hands to make fish, octopus and crabs in the sea. We ended with a wiggling fish just made from colored card and two thin wooden sticks.
