 Oh my goodness! Or should I say "Oh Dios mio!" When I came across this little picture book I was over the moon! It's a Mexican twist of the classic The Little Red Hen... with all the repetition and morals of the old story, but with the added benefit of introducing some Spanish words! I don't have to tell you that we had a blast repeating; "Yo noooooo! I move tooooo slooow!" and "If I grow arms tonight, I'll help you manana igauna!" Then we painted our desert background and drew and cut out Tortuga the lazy tortoise who refused to help Iguana prepare for her fiesta! 
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Last week the Picassos looked at the struggles of Horace Pippin and his determination to get back to painting after injuring his arm. (He took 3 years to complete his first painting after his injury!) They created pictures of themselves sitting at their easels and imagined what they would be painting and conjured up their fantasy bedrooms/art studios! See the first part of this lesson here. This week they painted them and they are just dreamy!  This week the Doodlebugs learned all about frogs! Bull frogs to be exact! We took a look at the life cycle of the bull frog and a lot of them could identify the stages. I love when we get to work a little science into our class and this was definitely fun for both the boys and girls to look at pictures of the different stages and learn just how BIG a bull frog can get! Then of course we got down to drawing and painting our own fantastic frogs! Take a look at them in action :0   The Picassos were introduced to the artist Horace Pippin and I used the book A Splash of Red to tell the story of his life and give them an idea of the man and his art. Horace overcame his poor upbringing and even survived a war albeit with an injured arm but none of that could keep him away from his love of art! He found a way to prop his injured arm so he could still draw and he worked and worked until it got stronger and he was brave enough to exhibit his paintings even though he had no formal art training and his work eventually made him famous!  This story is meant to highlight that everyone's journey is different and really gives the children a chance to be quiet and imagine. (Something that can get lost in a world full of distractions!) They looked at some pictures of his art and then they started drawing from their imaginations... which is what Horace did! They all started off with the shape of an easel on their paper and they were tasked to imagine the rest of the art piece. What would they be painting on their easel? What would their room look like? Take a look at the start of their imagination pieces... Next week they'll complete them with paint!  My little Doodlebugs are certainly not too young to get in on our Moko Jumbie action! They looked at a short clip of some Moko Jumbies in training and saw lots of tricks and we talked about the wonderful colours and costumes that these characters can sometimes be dressed in! To portray their Moko Jumbies they created a textured background to mimic the sky and then they traced the silhouette of a Moko Jumbie! They added their own colours and decorations to complete our Carnival piece.  The Carnival season is fast approaching and I feel like this term only just started but here we are jumping right into Carnival mode! As we all know Moko Jumbies are an exciting and intriguing part of Carnival culture. The Picassos got a bit of history on what influences brought them to our shores and what they symbolize and then we got right down to watching this short clip of children their age who are learning the Moko Jumbie skills! Their task today... to draw and paint a Moko Jumbie. To do this they had to decide on their composition... where is the Jumbie doing his dance, what is in the background? They also had to come up with his pose and costume or clothes. Then of course they decide if they will draw one Moko Jumbie or a group. Take a look at what they produced.  Salvador Dali was one of the most eccentric artistic characters of all times! Among his many many quirks...
 So after chatting a little about the man and a little about his art my little Doodlebugs got down to making a portrait of Dali and his mustache!!  This week it's all about the eccentric Salvador Dali at the studio! Dali is known for creating some extremely strange and thought-provoking art in the surrealist style. He was born in Spain in 1904, the second son to his parents. His older brother also named Salvador Dali died before he was born and his parents gave him the same name. Some say that this is why young Dali fought to have his personality recognized and made such a show of his presence.  Dali had many, many quirks... such as;
But Dali put all of his eccentricity into his art so you know that the resulting images pushed the limits of what was considered to be normal! The Picassos looked at one of his pieces in particular, simply named Elephants, which you can see below.  The animal with its long spindly legs brings to mind the concepts of weight and space. We talked about the symbolism in the painting and I drew their attention to the bulkiness of the animal, the thin legs, the barren background and the obelisks on the backs of the elephant and the fact that these are actually floating. They created their own Dali-inspired animals! Take a look.  |
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