Billy Goats Gruff

Lasting about a week, W did a literacy unit based on the Three Billy Goats Gruff. We started by reading the story, then there was character analysis, a formal complaint letter to the council about harassment from the goats and an alternative ending. The big task which was to create a cardboard theatre and write a play script to perform.

W threw himself into the art aspect and created a background and bridge. A short diversion into perspective resulted in a river which flowed beautifully into the distance and loads of sheep in the fields. We used cutouts from Twinkl for the characters which we hot glued onto skewers.

Play script writing can be a challenge in KS2. The inclination, from years of reading and listening to stories, is to describe and explain. Play writing requires an abstract view; W had to step out of the story and recast himself from describer to director - delegating the job of story-telling to his characters and scenery.

The start point is identifying and understanding that plays happen in scenes not chapters (which are typically set out by time). For plays, the location takes priority and each location change will determine the scene. We have to identify:
1. Location of this scene
2. Characters in this scene

After that, we start the dialogue with a new speaker on each line. It was a challenge to convince W that we don't need to say 'he shouted' after the words as we're using direct speech (but confusingly, without the speech marks). Stage directions (shouting) can be added in brackets.

Writing plays is a specific skill. It feels clumsy and flat to strip a story down to only what is said and requires faith that what's on paper will spring into a magical masterpiece when it's brought to life on stage. Accents must be decided upon, lines and their expression practiced and entry/exit timings perfected.

None of those things happened in our play.

The stage doors fell off, the troll entered facing the wrong way, W dropped the script, I forgot my lines and the bridge collapsed.

It was a triumph. 5 stars.

Autumn Craft

When there are hundreds of thousands of leaves falling into your garden it's a necessity find ways to reduce the pile. I thought I had it made - we can use some for craft, I thought.

Then discovered that apparently our leaves aren't good enough and the boys instead gathered a bag-full from the woods while walking the dog. Back-fire.

Three lovely little projects were born : leaf hedgehogs, clay leaf bowl and coaster, terrarium.

Stone Age

The stone age has been a fantastic topic; we took about 4 weeks over it, using it as a running thread through various activities.

I've been too busy to blog properly for the last month or so so I'll cheat with visuals, a resource list and a question-based structure to show our working ...

History : How long was the stone age and what are the Neolithic, Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods?
How does life now differ from stone age life? Where did people live, how did they cook, sleep, hunt? English : Compehension on Skara Brae.

 

Literacy : Stone Age Boy + The Secrets of Stonehenge.

RE & DT : Where is Stonehenge and what is a henge? How was it built, over what period and why? Who might be buried there? Where did the stones come from and how might they have been moved? What clues were found to indicate the original purpose? Did the purpose change over time? Why do people worship there today?

Art : Making natural dyes with herbs/spices/berries, using charcol for drawing, stone age cave paintings.

Resources:
History timeline
Twinkl stone age resources, incl making a paper model of Stonehenge
Comprehension on Skara Brae
Horrible Histories clips
Field trip to Stonehenge

Everything Zen ..

... I don't think so.

The 11+ (sorry Transfer Test) created a pretty stressful couple of months (understatement). As an antidote I had the idea of making mini zen gardens. I was giddy with optimism and self-congratulation at this easy, quick, genius idea. Clever me.

A quick search on google images only served to reinforce the fact that this was the best idea I'd had all week.

Problem 1 was locating suitable frames. I spent an unhappy 20 minutes crawling around in a spidery loft, banging my head (in frustration and also on the rafters) until I found a pair of matching frames. Unfortunately they had our wedding pictures in but I was too fed up to keep hunting so now I'm looking at my younger self, in a big white dress, stuck on the fridge. If I could go back and give advice to 20-something-newly-wed-fridge-girl it would be : don't even think about making a mini zen garden when you're 36. Oh - and spend less time on, or in, the fridge.

Problem 2 was finding sand. And gravel. And shiny beads. I didn't know Buddhists could be this demanding. Sheds were searched, craft drawers emptied and in the end, in despair, I tipped a load of sand out from the candle arrangement on the coffee table. Phew.

Problem 3 - tools. The loft, sheds and craft drawers are full to bursting with everything, literally everything, except for mini zen garden tools. Luckily, we foraged some sticks from the garden and set to making mini rakes with a glue gun and some swearing.

We're 2 hours in and I'm still waiting for a serene feeling of deep inner peace to descend.

Finally, with frames, sand, gravel, beads, candles, stones and custom-made mini stick tools all in play we were ready for some serious relaxation.

Re-designing was fun, it was like an etch-a-sketch.

Not enough fun to eclipse problem 4 though.... there is sand EVERYWHERE.

I spent the next hour hoovering. I think zen is overrated. I'll stick with gin.

Impact

Take one visit to the Tate Modern last week.

Add 2 boys with nothing to do at 8am.

Leave for 30 minutes.

We saw Piet Modrian at the Tate and discovered that one of his works sold for $50.6m. We've had a lot of fun thinking about what we could buy with that amount of money!

Abstract

Matisse's work appeals to my two. W loves colour and minimalism. K loves detail and technical balance. I wanted the boys to create an abstract piece of art and I was curious to see what they'd come up with without guidance from me and while sitting next to each other.

W takes his lead from K in many things but when it comes to art he sets his own path and isn't influenced by his big brother. We spent some time researching Matisse and getting inspired by some of his later cutout work. Shape and colour are the joy of Matisse - he also knew Picasso and they were both friends and rivals. K was drawn to 'Bees' and W to 'The Parakeet and the Mermaid'.

Art is best interpreted by the viewer, so I cordially present :
K's piece : "Static" inspired by technology and a badly tuned TV.
W's piece : "Abstract"inspired by woodland and a strawberry mousse for lunch.

Both available for general sale, signed and authenticity assured, for £5m each from the Fridge Gallery at my place.

Thoroughly inspired, we headed off to The Tate a few days later. We stuck to the abstract gallery as there was enough there to keep us busy. Highlights were Dali and Picasso but the whole experience was cool and unpretentious and the variety of artwork was diverse and engaging. We'll be back to explore other areas. It was fun to chat about what art is and how things are valued by how much people want them. 

The Tate sits right by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre so we watched a Midsummer Night's Dream from the Yard. It's cheap but standing for 4 hours was tough going on little (and big) legs. We'd pre-read the play and the boys kept up with the story but we were hampered by visibility and missed a lot of the physical jokes because of a pillar in our line of sight. We'll return when the boys are a bit taller or save up to pay for seats!

Then we ate crisps, stalked pigeons on the lawn and chased bubbles on the edge of the Thames - just in case we were getting a bit up ourselves. 

Finally a cheeky Picasso from W - with a small diversion into genetics! He drew me and S, then cut the faces and swapped parts so each face is half mum, half dad. K is on the right, W on the left!

Art imitating life.

Maths is Fun

Exploring maths apps today - the ones below are ideal for consolidating fractions, angles, area, tessellation, 2D shapes and symmetry work. If we're ticking boxes then it's also a winner for ICT and art.

But who cares about that when you can make cool patterns?

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/geoboard/

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/pattern-shapes/

Sunrise Colours

One morning last month we had the most beautiful sunrise. The boys spotted it over breakfast and so I took a quick snap, hoping to catch the layers of colours in the sky.

Inspired, we set about having an art lesson (over 3 days) with tree techniques, paint washes, blending and drawing with various pens.

W (landscape minimalist) interpreted the image with typical focus on a single tree and had to be encouraged to add any further detail. A house was born of imagination.

K (still life perfectionist) got stressed that there were too many trees to recreate so needed encouragement that we were using the image as inspiration not to produce an exact copy.

Both boys were really proud of their work.

What nature supplied:

Creating a wash and blending:

Planning & drafting:

The finished artwork:

 

Shaping Up

We've been playing with shapes lately; we've looked at how things are made up of shapes, revised 2D shape names (I can never remember what a trapezoid is) and talked tessellation.

One activity was to see what animals we could draw from common shapes. I'd have gone for a slug or starfish but the boys were more ambitious and made some beautiful creatures. We made tracks, spirals and walls with jenga blocks with a side note on strength and stability.

For tessellation we played with the fab website at http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/tess/tess.htm and created patterns inspired by Victorian tiling. To finish off, we looked at tessellation in nature, with a google image search bringing up wonderful examples in flowers, honeycombs and snakes.

A note on shapes - we had to look up the difference between a rhombus and a diamond :
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-rhombus-and-a-diamond

Simple Pleasures

Brain ache set in and everyone was grotty. The day was poorly planned, I was juggling too much and the kids detected possible cracks appearing in my no-screens policy which they were trying to widen. Enthusiastically.

When things are going downhill, there is a natural tendency to keep going. By working harder and doing even more I expect to accelerate into a solution. My logic is flawed; it's based on a faulty premise that I'm pointing in the right direction in the first place. So, against all of my instincts, I stopped.

I closed my laptop, put my phone on silent, turned off the hob and looked at the moany faces of my offspring.

"Let's make playdough."

K grumbled that he didn't want to - a position he maintained for about 5 nano seconds, no-one can resist the joy of playdough.

We spent a blissful 2 hours mixing colours, making shapes, moulding and chatting. We've baked our creations and they came out beautifully!

The benefits of pausing.