Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Saeby/Jytland Denmark 17/07/2015

After leaving Laesรธ and being kind of shaken by the sea, we reached Saeby.
Although it started to rain, we had a very good walk at the beach where the children collected what felt like at least 1 ton of seashells :-)
On our way back we enjoyed the typical yellow colored houses of the old cloister and visiting the beautiful and rather big church of Saeby.


Laesรธ/Denmark - 07/16/2015

At the beginning of the summer school break we were lucky to be a few days off before our real vacation is going to be a up in a few....
Since Madita is in Northern Denmark now waiting to hopefully jump over the Sakgerrak, we went to the island Laeso at the first day, enjoying the atmosphere of a busy summer holiday area and being in nature after a long school year...
The weather was great and we had good winds, but quite some waves from transversely behind, which gave me a good reminder of my old friend the sea sickness. Nevertheless, once being at land everything felt perfectly ;-)


Sunday, July 12, 2015

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Children's Art: Prints and Stamps

For a longer time I planed to look into the business of printing with the kids.
Actually I planed to do this during that time of summer break we stay at home....but then I received this very decent book by Traci Bunkers and we had to start right away :-)

Here comes our first round of printing: We used lids and corks and Friedrich was always eager to try one wood mold I have for years (and can not recall where it comes from).....
For color we used acrylic paint, although I guess in the future we might repeat with ink pads as well :-)


Children's Art: Sculpturing with finds

Last Monday I talked to the children of the painting group about the way artists like Picasso and Mirรณ  made sculptures with stuff they found.
Friedrich loves to quote a friend of Mirรณ, who said: "When I find a stone, it is a stone. When Mirรณ finds a stone, it is a Mirรณ."
It would have been lovely, if we could have gone on a walk to find things before. But since time was limited, the  children used what I found in my drawers ;-)


Sunday, July 5, 2015

Saturday, July 4, 2015

Monday, June 29, 2015

Chldren's Craft: Melted Crayon Butterflies

We already used melted crayons on rocks. When I saw these beautiful butterflies at Artbarblog  I knew we had to give it a try.

It was big fun last Saturday :-)

I printed out a simply butterfly pattern from the internet, which we folded in the middle (and unfolded it). 
First we had to peel of the paper wrappings from our crayons. After that was done, we used a simple sharpener to make crayon snippets, which we let drop on one side of the butterfly. The common rule "Less is more" can be applied here ;-) 
The paper was folded again and I covered it with a baking sheet additionally to prevent my electric iron from getting stained ;-)
It needed only a very short touch with the hot iron to let the crayon snippets melt....
We unfolded the paper immediately and let it dry.
The butterflies can than be cut out and be arranged on a larger piece of colored paper.

We use our melted crayon butterfly picture as seasonal decoration of our kitchen door :-)


Children's Arts: Painting like Morris Louis....



Using this great curriculum for children to explore famous artist, we took advantage of the brilliant weather and did some messy stuff outside in the garden ;-))

Since we are so fond of Helen Frankenthaler, the idea was to paint like Morris Louis and his way of color field paintings:
We taped heavy watercolor paper to some trays. The children applied spots of acrylic paint on one edge.
When the trays were put upright the paint already started to run down. To increase this process they repeatedly sprayed water on the paint.
The first round were not that successful, so we switched to tempera paint hoping that it would run more smoothly, which it did....

Resuming this experiment I would say, that it is a promising technique, which needs some improvement ;-)

In the evening I could not help and try the whole thing using liquid water colors.....;-)


Big relieve.....

A few weeks ago we found this mysterious thing while gardening, which we figured out in the internet was the cocoon of an owlet moth....
We prepared a jar following a instruction from the internet and placed the cocoon inside....we waited ever since and nothing seemed to happen....
When I started to worry that we damaged the poor little thing...all the sudden....a beautiful moth was sitting in the jar. :-)
After the wings were dried we released it, very relieved everything turned out to by alright ;-)


Friday, June 26, 2015

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Children's Art: Drawing in the sand

When I came to the school yesterday at noon to pick up our children, I found to very sweet little first grades sitting in the sand infront of the bicycle rack. They drew with their fingers in the sand and the regularity of the pattern caughted my eye.
When I asked them what they are doing, they told me, that they visited an art exhibition with their class that day and that they wanted to draw and make art themselves now.....
I simply love the idea, that children are so touched by art that they try it out themselves :-)


Friday, June 19, 2015

Drops

Even the cold and rainy weather we currently experience in Hamburg has its beautiful sides :-)


Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Monday, June 15, 2015

Da Vinci in Hamburg/Germany

One afternoon last week we took the chance and visited an exhibition about the great Leonardo Da Vinci.

The exhibition was smaller than expected, but there were a very interesting section with decent models of Da Vincis mechanical inventions, which the children (and the adults) were allowed to try out.
Friedrich already had some experiences with the Da-Vinci-Bridge and both children picked up the ideas behind the other mechanical principals easily in a playful way. The insight that many of these inventions are still used on a daily basis like chain drive in a bicycles or pulleys, was definitely what they took home.

Other sections showed his live, his way of painting and investigating nature by drawing.

The exhibition gave us a good overview about live and meaning of this multitalented artist.