Nature Club ~ Signs of Spring

Friday we enjoyed a wonderful morning out and about with our Nature Club friends, a well needed outdoor session! While enjoying a nature walk with friends the children were all searching for signs of spring. We brainstormed some ideas to look for:

• Budding Trees
• Grasses Growing
• Bulb Plants Breaking Ground
• Birds Returning
• Bugs
• Frod Egg Masses In Pond
• Green Shoots
• Birds Building Nests
• Squirrels
• Wild Flowers
• Animal Tracks
• Blooming Trees

The kids found just about everything on their list while enjoying a mile walk. Holly nature journaled her findings and we discussed them on the way home. I think we will try to return in a few weeks and see if many changes have happened as Spring arrives!

Art Club ~ Pointillism

On Friday we hosted Art Club and did a small session on Pointillism. I introduced the artist to make pointillism popular, Georges Seurat, and we learned about what Pointillism is. How 'ism' is a movement... meaning his art style became a movement others followed. We looked a small slide show on his life and art style, looked at some photos of his work and then set to work on our own art work.

The kids were to design a fish or sea scene and complete the work in pointillism, or very small dots of paint. Considering our class was a large mixed age group we have all skill levels - older kiddos did free hand art without drawing their work, younger children drew their scene first and filled it in. Some kiddos were completed very quickly while others spent nearly the entire session completing their work. Seeing the diversity among our artists was really neat, some beautiful work was done!

Holly chose to do a sea scene, in which she did a fantastic job on! While her painting was very simple in appearance the steady work she did by painting it JUST in small dots (with an ear swab and toothpick mind you) is amazing! She spent the whole session working on her project, very determined to complete it. I am very proud of her thoughtfulness in her work and commitment to doing it as she invisioned.

Holly's sea scene -- done in all dots, from a q-tip and a toothpick.

All of the kiddo's finished art work! Great Stuff!

Working Hard

Sorry for so much silence here lately - we will return with more postings soon!

Holly is busy working hard! She has been busy finishing up her first books of the year for first grade and moving on to her second books here soon. We are doing a lot of review work, both online and off. Many hands on projects are consuming our time - fun stuff like dinosaurs, bodies and art!!! Learning is happening all day here lately, that along with some outings, field trips, play dates, park time, little music class, Camp Fire, candy sales for Camp Fire, library time and swimming. Life is good!

Hudson is also busy learning and playing! He can now tell you all of his ABC's through song but better yet, he can identify them all too. I have began introducing lowercase this week and he is quickly grasping them. He knows all of his basic shapes: circles, oval, rectangle, triangle, rhombus/diamond, semi circle and square. Hudson is enjoying puzzles like crazy now and getting really good at them, does many shape sorters and stackers with ease, is pretty good at matching colors to shapes or items and is counting up to ten. He is mastering his colors now too. Words have just taken off - full thoughts are coming out on what he wants to do while we are doing school now, he will bring me projects or ask to write or do art. He knows what he wants!

So, we are here and learning and doing great!!! More to come very soon...

Bleeding Tissue Christmas Trees

Playing with bleeding tissue is a favorite art activity in our house, such an easy item to us for all ages!!!

For this project Holly drew a Christmas tree (and I drew one for Hudson) and she used little bits of bleeding tissue to color and decorate her tree. You place the bleeding tissue over your picture and then paint with water, let sit for a bit for richer colors and then remove the wet tissue. This leaves behind beautiful color and design... also a great lesson in color blending.

I appreciate using bleeding tissue with Hudson because it is super simple for him to use on his own. Aside from drawing the tree he placed all of the tissue and painted it himself.

Both of these turned out really pretty!

Turkeys

Today the kids made paper turkeys for art, Holly's version and a tot version! They had a lot of fun enjoying this fall art project and it coupled great with a couple of books we had just read together.

This is a very easy turkey to create - I had no pattern, just winded it. I took two different sized circle containers and traced them, larger on the bottom. Connect the two circles with a thin neck. Using the larger circle for the body I guided the two layers of feathers... making each layer larger. You could definitely do more layers if one wanted, we were running low on time so I made only two layers. Then the little wings, beak and gobbler with some google eyes completes this little guy. Super cute and very easy!

For the tot version I made the core body and then let Hudson help glue on the face. Then he had a pile of little fall colored squares to glue on as the feathers. He picked that up very quickly and once again - loved glue work!

Such a fun little project to adorn our walls!

Sponge Painted Pumpkins

We had fun doing some sponge painting - something we probably do not do enough of, which is crazy since it really requires very little... paint, sponge and paper! I drew a pumpkin in black marker and then set up both (yes, BOTH) kids with a plate of orange and brown paint with a sponge. Holly took her time with the actual sponge technique whereas Hudson soon found he could smear it. When they dried we cut them out. They both turned out great and I have to say it was wonderful to do an art project with both kids and no restrictions!!!

Tot School

Some items Hudson enjoyed this week included a few puzzles, shape sorters, color blocks with saying the names, a fall art project which also included saying the names, play dough, some fine motor work and music! He is learning the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Old McDonald and Gray Squirrel for our fall songs. Music is something he just seems to adore, he gets up and boogies, shakes instruments, sings and dances around. With little finger play songs he is getting better at the movements of them - especially Itsy Bitsy Spider. Next week I am going to introduce 5 Little Pumpkins for the week on our felt board I think.

Hudson's fall art project was to put fabric fall colored leaves on clear contact paper, a classic we do each year. He enjoyed the sticky sensation of the contact paper - he experimented with that for a bit and then finally filled the sheet up. This was a very simple and non-messy project for him!

Adding a leaf.

Checking out the sticky aspect of this stuff!

He did REALLY well with this!

Holding it up for a picture for mom.

Exploring tweezers - seeing how they work for the first time.

Trying said tweezers out. He did pretty good for his first time using them.

Hudson loves this car puzzle and can pretty much do it alone if he wants.

Starting his shape sorting board.

Took a while but he made it through! So proud!!