knit one

Our y3's are currently knitting! Most of them, having mastered the basics are flying along. As their current study theme is to do with cold places I had the brilliant idea (!) of getting them to knit a bobble hat! It's been a struggle but I think we may be getting there.

Meanwhile on my painting board - 'A Close Finish'. Acrylics on paper, roughly A4 size.
Playing around with my 'new', extremely pared down and simplistic style, to see if I could do more than footy players and folk diving! I would more than welcome any feedback.

A is for...

Today in 'Golden Time' ( a reward session at the end of the week that the children 'earn') we drew horses. 
They did 'before' pics ;

and then, following really simple guidelines (starting with a letter 'A'), they drew horses in various poses.   

Bear in mind that these are only thumbnail sketches and not huge.

automaton in action

Think I've managed it! Below is the clip showing the latest automaton in action. I left the vintage gaming pieces exactly as I found them. I like the fact that the springs on which they are mounted adds to the motion. 

The box is an old wooden 'animal domino' one and the simple cam movement utilises MDF wheels.
(Hmm - video doesn't work on my iPad though !?!)

origami

As part of the Literacy unit on 'instructions' the y3 children have been creating origami pieces. These are my 'here's one I made earlier' and are all made from a very similar set of folds - in fact the tiger and polar bear are identical right up to the colouring in stage. 

 

All of them were made from a square piece of copy paper. The 'Pudsey' (Bottom pic - right) is in anticipation of 'Children in Need' on Friday.

'bot a doodle doo

Rubbish title for a post but couldn't resist it. Today's doodle, another robot (botette ??).

 

 

 

A5, ink & pencil on paper

more finds

Came across a huge outdoor 'jumble sale' in town yesterday. Spotted these and snapped them up - though not too sure what I'm going to do with them! They appear to be gaming pieces. They are metal and the stand works as a small spring, making the horse and rider wobble backwards and forwards. If anyone can shed any light I'd be most grateful. Each piece stands about 5cm (2") tall.

 

The sad thing is that there are only 17 legs and 4 tails between all 5 pieces.

 

 

 

Also bagged a scrabble game with wooden letter tiles that I was going to sell on - but my wife might have nabbed them for jewellery purposes! Interestingly, being a German set the o's and u's have umlauts.

bareback rider

Over the hols my wife 'bullied' me into getting an ipad! Am slowly getting to grips with it and thought I'd try and add an entry to this blog using it. Failed miserably! I managed to take a photo (using the ipad) of a recent sketch but then for the life of me couldn't insert it into my blog.I ended up doing it the usual way - digital camera, SD card onto laptop, laptop into blog.

Any help or advice as to how to do it solely on the ipad would be most welcome as it would certainly remove a lot of the faff and be much more flexible.

The sketch came about after having seen an artist on the quayside at La Rochelle. She had a range of images for sale (at what I thought were quite steep prices) and one that caught my eye was of a lady standing on the back of a horse. I copied the essence of the pose but drew it in my own 'style' ;

 

 

 

I had to stick several sheets of A4 paper together to get it as I wanted it. Unfortunately I forgot to get the name of the artist and didn't have my camera with me to take any photos. Might reproduce this as a shaded drawing as I don't think I'd be able to do it justice as a painting.