The Bear's Winter House

S asked to read "The Bear's Winter House"  by John Yeoman and Quentin Blake (ISBN 978-1-84270-916-0). 

After finishing the story he wanted to make a house/ den too. I drew his attention to the plan bear makes of his house and S asked to make a plan too.

A quickly follows saying "bear house, bear house".

Having started to learn letters at school since September, S started by making a list of what bear needed, "sticks, moss, leaves".

He then drew the house. (Photo upside down)

We went outside to have a go at building the house. We were on holiday so I didn't have a toy bear to use in the play. We used the boys' owls instead.

Trying it out for size.

"We need moss mummy, the bear needs moss".

A finished house.

The boys loved building on a large scale, the achievement of moving huge logs around and working out how to balance and prop them up safely. The fact that they could use the shelter made it more exciting. They could also see which logs needed moving to enable them to move around inside. 

Who would you build a house for?

Leaf Colours

After exploring our Autumn leaves - making pictures and  creating sculptures and sharing stories such as "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf" by Lois Elhert (ISBN 0-15-266197-2) we tried to recreate some  autumnal colours using paint.

However - instead of intially using brushes we used a salad spinner.

S squirted paint into a cardboard leaf shape which we tacked to the bottom of the spinner.

We put on the lid and then began to spin. This is also a great gross motor activity for young children.

Once we removed the lid we could see the paint distribute over the leaf.

After making several using different shaped leaves and colour combinations we used fine brushes to pick up an residue in the bottom of the spinner to paint onto some leaves themselves. 

We displayed our leaves on the window once dry. What methods have you used to create autumnal colours?

Leaf Man

"Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert (ISBN 0-15-205304-2) is one of our favourite Autumn stories as it lends itself to endless possibilities in using leaves to create pictures.

We have collected leaves on various Autumn walks and gathered them together.

"These are his eyes (conkers) and these spiky bits (sweet chestnuts) are his eyebrows. That's (acorns) his smile. These (side leaves) are his arms. Now he needs some legs"

S went on to tell me a beautiful story all about his Leaf man and the adventures he got up to. What leaf character would you make?

Conkers

Several weeks ago a good friend of mine bought me this fantastic set for my birthday, comprising of a wooden clamp and three screws to make hole in conkers.

S at 4 years could very easily unscrew the top of the holder, drop the conker inside and tighten to clamp it in place. He then perserved and twisted the screwing device round and round to make a hole through the conker. This worked particularly well when the conkers were freshly fallen, harder conkers are obviously more difficult to penetrate.

Having a bowl of freshly holed conkers opened up many possibilities for creating. Threading seemed a natural way to use the conkers and so we started to thread them onto pipe cleaners. When the holes were made with the largest screw A, at 2 years, could push it through independently.

S was keen to thread too - he is what he came up with.

If left outside - be warned - by the next morning only numbers 3 and 4 remained entacted.

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.