Cat and Bird Art

 Cat and Bird (1928) Paul Klee

Our amazing Cat and Bird art is up in the office. I was inspired by this post at Rumriver Art Center. We used paint rolled on with a roller, vivid marker, and pastel.

I really enjoy mixed media art projects with children, and Paul Klee is great inspiration. I used Paul Klee's Senecio portrait as a model for some amazing self portraits that I created with my class last year. Thanks to Use Your Coloured Pencils.

The Friendly Games

 Our 'Friendly Games' Discovery session was busy this morning with lots of Commonwealth Games inspired activities that encouraged the children to practise their friendship skills.

 

 Here we are completing a mountain biking dot to dot, last night New Zealand came 1st and 2nd in the mens mountain biking!

 

 The children enjoying taking turns on the fitness circuit.

 And this is my personal favourite - Judo Jaguar!

As the Commonwealth Games are in Scotland this year the children used blue paper triangles to complete the Scottish flag.

The children made these very cool highland terrier dogs - just like the real dogs that escorted the teams at the opening ceremony. 

 Photo from here.

These pipe cleaner people are ready to compete at the games, just use one pipe cleaner to make the head and legs, and bend another to make the arms. 

Dr Seuss Discovery and ..... Crazy Sock Day!

 Even the teachers were ready for our Crazy Sock Day to celebrate Dr Seuss Discovery. 

Dr Seuss' Fox in Socks was our inspiration for our crazy socks.

We also designed our own crazy socks.

We used the Cat in the Hat and his amazing super tall stripy hat to make ....

.... our own stripy Cat in the Hat hats, ....

.... and write 'at' words.

We made The Lorax mustaches ....

 .... cotton ball and pipe cleaner truffula trees ....

.... and planted bean truffula seeds.

Our Horton ears are good for listening ....

.... and helped us practise our cutting skills.

 Then we used them to listen for the Whos from Whoville, located as a speck of dust somewhere on our clover flowers.

Our oobleck or gloop was great fun to play with. Gloop is a non-Newtonian fluid, something that is a solid and a liquid at the same time! Hit the oobleck hard or try to pick it up it acts like a solid, hold it in your hands and it drips slowly through your fingers.

You can make it at home with cornflour and a little water. Mix the water in slowly until it turns into gloop.

 

Greedy Cat

 

After reading lots of different stories about Greedy Cat by the fantastic New Zealand author Joy Cowley, we made our own Greedy Cats.

Greedy Cat Peg Craft

Of course our Greedy Cats are not all cat colours, mainly because I ran out of orange pipe-cleaners.  But we think they are pretty cute, just like Greedy Cat.

 Use marker-pens to colour in the pegs. 

Put the pegs on Greedy Cat's body for his legs. 

Colour Greedy Cat's face the same colour as his legs, and cut it out.

Draw on some stripes or zig-zags on Greedy Cat's body.

Use glue dots or sellotape to stick on Greedy Cat's tail on one side of his body, and his head on the other.

I hung our Greedy Cats in front of our large window for everyone to see (unfortunately I don't have a suitable windowsill for our Greedy Cats to stand on).

I found nearly 100 wooden clothes-pegs for $2 at a local shop. Bargain!

Check out these posts about the amazing peg elephants and hanging peg bats that my class made last year.


I love using pegs in the classroom - opening and closing pegs is a fine motor skill that builds up those important hand and wrist muscles to get them ready for writing.