art group

At this month's art group, we looked at some classic paintings held at The National Gallery and the children then chose an image to paint, using acrylics on canvas. 

The images we looked at included Constable's 'The Hay Wain' .....

Renoir's 'The Umbrellas' ........

& Henri Rousseau's 'Tiger in a Tropical Storm Surprised' .........

Tess and Brodie both chose to paint the tiger picture. Tess's painting ......

and Brodie's ........ (Brodie got a bit carried away with the sky, and I confess that I was pressured into painting some leaves for him, top left!!) ....

the very hungry caterpillar

Posting slightly out of sync ..... last Friday, one of our home ed groups celebrated the 40th anniversary of Eric Carle's 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' with a story and activity session at a local library. Over a couple of hours, the children listened to the story, helped to feed the caterpillar in and out of the food that he ate in an interactive book, retold the story using a story board and then did related crafts and puzzles. Tess & Brodie really enjoyed joining in with the story telling, and taking their turn at the interactive elements. They also enjoyed the crafts, and would have liked to continue for a bit longer. After the session finished, we went to the park for a play with some of the friends who had been at the library.  

Inside the book, showing the various foods that the caterpillar ate (a caterpillar toy was fed through the holes as the story progressed) ......

The story board. Both Tess & Brodie took part during the group story telling, and Brodie did it again with me afterwards, correctly selecting all the numbers and foods. 

Hand- & footprint butterflies (Tess's on the left, with skinny footprints; Brodie's on the right).

Tess's caterpillar .......

Tess was being 'Hannah Montana' that day ......

Brodie's caterpillar .....

new forest adventures

We headed over to the New Forest today in Sparkly Princess Cinderella (the campervan) and met up with our friends, Julia & Grace. We had a great day, with some cycling for the girls (though I think we need to face the fact that Tess's bike is just a tad too small for her now!) .......

We pretty much had the place to ourselves .....

Brodie practising his 'hoody' look .....

Beware the one-eyed man with a stick - we have a growing collection of Brodie's sticks in the campervan, as he is very partial to finding good specimens when we are out and about.....

The 3 muskateers ....

Near where we parked, someone had built a shelter from branches and logs, and the 3 children had a wonderful time playing in here all afternoon. We can't completely confirm the games that were played as any time we approached, we were told there was a large sign outside saying 'No Mummies Allowed', but there seemed to be quite a bit of 'cleaning' going on at one point (must have got that idea from Grace, can't imagine it originated from our house!!!).

Snacks in and around Cinderella .....

At the end of the day, we headed home, collected Rob (who had been working locally today) and went to the beach for burgers and chips at sunset .......

up the tower

On Friday, we took our first trip up the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, with Susie & Hannah. Tess was  bit nervous about going up, but both she and Brodie loved it once they were there (Hannah is an old hand at this). And after a first tentative walk across the glass floor, they were running and dancing across it. While all around them, adults clung to handrails and tried to bring themselves to look down, let alone walk across the glass!!! The views from the Tower were astonishing, well worth a visit. Brodie has asked to go back there every day since!

a day in the life of .....

On Monday, we had a whole day with no activities scheduled and no particular plan, so I thought I would try and capture as much of what we did that day as I could.

Tess & Brodie kicked off the day with an impromptu music session...... (sorry, didn't capture them actually playing the instruments, I was still formulating my plan at that point!) ....

Looking at addition (both Tess and Brodie) using the number square, and counting numbers to 100 for Tess. 

Brodie did some jigsaws ....

Tess getting ready for the day, with a spot of nail varnish.....

Time for some dancing ... to ABBA of course (unfortunately, I missed the part where they were dancing together!) ......

Brodie decided he needed to 'remote control' Tess's dancing ....

Tess finds a willing partner after all....

Even princesses need to garden .....

and pirates ...

Hang on a minute, there's some serious digging required .....

What have you got there, Tess?

a wiggly worm .....

We scattered some wildflower seeds ....

And found that the rhubarb has been growing well (Brodie wanted to try some, so I picked a stalk and cooked it with some raspberries, but of course, he refused to try it in the end - have to say, it was delicious , and I'm not a rhubarb fan either!).....

Time for playing in the beautiful spring sunshine....

Tess dusting off the cobwebs from the climbing frame .... literally!!! ....

Making a magic maize picture .....

.... of a rabbit ....

Brodie and I had a look at some human anatomy (his choice of book) and talked about the digestive system .....

Then Brodie played a game on the computer that shows it all in action .....

Back outside for some more climbing .....

.... and more dancing .....

Tess picked a flower to press .....

Packing for holidays (apparently!) ....

... which changed into playing cooking and cafes on reaching their destination .....

Then we lit the lanterns in the garden ....

.... and ate our dinner .... (the orange blob to the left of Tess's plate is some playdoh beans on toast that Tess made during the cooking & cafe game).....

..... under the stars .... (you're going to have to take my word for it, it was a clear starry night, but they're not really showing up at this small size - if you look very carefully in the middle of the photo, you might just about see the faint blurs of stars - my first attempt to photograph star trails, and it was getting cold and late. Will have to try again another day).

These are the books we read or looked at during the day. Tess & Brodie also looked at some other books on their own (both together and individually).......