Walking through the jungle style museum hunt

On our visit to the Fitwilliam Museum today we played a game based on the book "Walking Through the Jungle" by Julie Lacome (ISBN 9780744536430)

On a previous visit I had taken some pictures of jungle-type animals and stuck them into cards with a clue to solve. I read the clue to the boys and they had to hunt for the animal somewhere in the gallery. We always had the picture to check if they weren't sure. After playing it once S wanted to have a go and told us the rhyme.

He then compared the picture to the artefact to check it was correct.

It was great fun and a lovely way to mix art and stories. I also managed to snap a few more pictures ready to make my next game!

Painting with Autumn blackberries

Painting with Autumnal juices

 

During an Autumn walk with the grandparents, A picked some blackberries. 

We also picked some apples from the garden to make a delicious blackberry and apple crumble. 

 

A noticed the juice stain on his hand and thought it was paint so we used some of the blackberries and some juice from some raspberries as paint.

"I'm going to hold my brush like a pencil" says S.

Beautiful additions to our Autumn display.

A Portrait Trail

S has been learning about portraits at school and so we decided to visit the National Portriat Gallery in London.

We did a family trail as suggested on their website which the boys thoroughly enjoyed.

We spent a lot of time discussing each portrait - who might be in it, where they were, how they were positioned etc, in preparation of making a photographic portrait of our family on our return.

Here the boys are discussing some of the paintings.

"The Fourdrinier Family" Attributed to John Downman, circa 1786

"The Capel Family" by Cornelius Johnson, circa 1640

We marked off what we had seen on the map and covered a good range of styles and eras.

The boys had a go at making their own portraits using the materials the gallery provided.

"It has two noses and green skin mummy" commented S. "Really?" I replied.

And here is where S got his inspiration from!

"Allen Jones" by Allen Jones 1959-1960

S continued his drawing in the restaurant at lunch time, "It's a chef".

"this is it's bottom" S shows me, pointing to the 2 round circles - inspiration from drawing the Matisse sculptures in France. 

And our finished family photo portrait - including Pudding the cat. 

S positioned us all- he was very keen to stand leaning against something, like he had seen in the "The Fourdrinier Family" portrait.