Conductors with paint brushes

We welcomed back a few more children today and even though our Tuesdays are quiet days, we had wonderful quality time with our teachers. Downstairs we continued working on our second canvas and tore up photos of orchids and some other flowers which we then pasted onto the painting. Before we did this we did some really serious cutting and you can see from the photos how much we were concentrating. We had to try to remember to keep our things pointing to the sky while we were cutting. We snipped pieces of paper to give us cutting practice and we all succeeded at this task. Then we pasted the photos onto the painting but we were really busy playing and building on the mat, we wanted to finish pasting quickly and when our teachers asked us to come back and paste some more pictures onto the canvas, we said that we didn’t want to do this. We are lucky that they understand our needs and sometimes let us stay immersed in our play and learning; rather than take us away to do something that they would like us to do.

 We sang songs at the table today. We sang “Five little leaves” and “Willaby wallaby woo”. This is a fun song where we learn about initial sounds of words and how we can play with words and sounds. We sang our “hello” song and did tapping on the table with different parts of our bodies. We tapped with our hands; we patted with our elbows; we knocked with our knuckles; we rubbed with our arms; we made circles with our hands and then we sang “Tommy Thumb” however instead of hiding our hands behind our backs, we hid them under the table. We sang “Open them shut them” as well. Outside we sang as we walked to the park. We sang “There was a farmer had a dog” and then Shelley changed the words and sang “There was a farmer had a cat and Ava was her name oh!” She then spelled our names as she sang them too.

We had a fun story called “Who sank the boat” and we sat so quietly looking at the pictures and listening to the story. We played a new game at the table where you have to spin an arrow and pick the matching shape and place it in your bowl. The shapes were a green triangle, an orange square, a yellow hexagon, a cream thin diamond, a blue fat diamond and a red trapezoid. When we had collected a few different shapes, we made a design with them on the table.

Upstairs we have been inspired by Jackson Pollock for our second canvas. Today we had a large piece of paper on the table with lots of newspaper on the floor and on the table. Circle time was where our Jackson Pollock experience began. We each took a paintbrush in our hands and pretended that we were conductors conduction an orchestra. We made different movements with the paintbrushes when the music was fast, when it was slow and when there were short, sharp chords. We then moved to the table and used spoons and brushes for the painting and for this activity we listened to the same music that helped us make short, sharp movements or long squiggly, swirly ones. Below is the sample of our Jackson Pollock work which we will do onto the canvas next time.

 When we arrived at school we continued making panels for our first canvas. Our teachers asked us to draw three large shapes on a card using black pens. Then we drew vertical lines as we had done before when we made our grids. When we came to one of the shapes that we had drawn, we followed around the edge of the shape all the way to the bottom of the page. We then turned the card 90 degrees and continued the process. This was an interesting activity and then we coloured the shapes in. Some of us already finished one of our cards and we chose where we wanted to pasted them on the canvas. They look really interesting. Our teachers are really inspired by this project and we love it too.

During library time we read “Christmas Rhyme Time”. Our teachers wanted us to look at the specific colours which we see at this time of the year; colours associated with Christmas, New Year and the holidays that we celebrate in December and January. We thought that gold, silver, white, red and green stood out prominently at this time of year.

We will use these colours for more activities that will go into our Workbooks/Portfolios. We are glad that our teachers have a working computer now as some of us missed seeing the journal yesterday afternoon.

Please remember the mums coffee morning on Thursday 29^th at the Australian embassy at 10am.

Enjoy the sunshine which is deceptive as it is soooooo cold outside. Brrrrrrr!

Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine.