A Very Full Week

Last week was half-term (school holidays) in the UK.  We kept ourselves very busy with a combination of activities, from which I am still trying to catch my breath.

1.  Drawing
Tiger and I decided to learn to draw something to mark Valentine's Day.

Given the multitude of things that one can draw for Valentine's Day, we thought we would learn to draw a few Art Deco roses:

The result is quite pleasing, although Tiger was happy to leave his drawing uncoloured.

2.  Climbing
Tiger went for his first-ever session of wall climbing and loved it!

I signed him up to try the activity out, not knowing whether how he would take to it.  Tiger was excited by the idea of it, as evident by his thinking and talking about it for days before the actual event.

The wall was much taller than we had anticipated (I had thought that the organiser would let the children who were doing it for the first time to try out 'baby walls' for a start), so I did not know what to expect in terms of how far Tiger would go up the wall on his first attempt.  He made it very nearly to the top.

3.  Reading
We spent a few hours at Tiger's favourite bookstore where he looked through various books before purchasing a few with the voucher given to him at Christmas by his great-aunt and great-uncle.

4. Hanging Out
Tiger's cousin turned 18 last week so there was a big family gathering/party where we saw relatives and caught up with everyone's news, even though we saw one another very recently at Christmas time.

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 2/24/15
2. Finishing Strong #44
3. The Virtual Refrigerator
4. My Week in Review #25
5. Hearts for Home Link Up - February 26
6. Collage Friday: Interest Led Learning
7. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the really awesome snow

Fashionably Klimt

On the last day of 2013, Tiger and I visited the National Gallery to see The Portrait in Vienna 1900 exhibition.

Although it was not strictly a solo exhibition of Gustav Klimt's, I used that visit as a launch pad for us to learn more about Klimt and his work.

There isn't much information on Klimt for children, probably because the erotic nature of his most famous late period of work and his rather promiscuous personal life don't lend themselves to be deemed suitable material for young children to study.  However, I was inspired by the non-erotic portraits we saw at the exhibition to study about this man's unique artistic style and its influence on modern day fashion and design.

We used postcards and prints of Klimt's work for our inspiration, to understand his use of contrasting background and colours.

 

Then we proceeded to work.

Below is Tiger's work process for this project:

1. We looked through a few magazines for Tiger to choose a pose which he liked.  Once he decided which pose he liked, he cut out the head and limbs of the model from the page
2. The cut-outs were carefully glued onto a pre-selected piece of construction paper.
3. Tiger drew the outline of the clothing on paper.
4. Then he selected the patterned papers that he wanted to use.
5. We looked at Klimt's prints again and talked about the interweaving patterns on his paintings.  This discussion made Tiger understand that he should think about variations in how he cut the patterned papers.
6. The cut-out patterns were arranged onto the paper, within the outline that Tiger had drawn.  Once he was happy with how the patterned papers were arranged, he glued each piece on carefully, making further adjustments to the way each piece was cut accordingly.

Other than the proportion of the human body being really out of whack, I think the dress is really quite funky.  I would probably wear a dress with such a loud pattern if I were 20 years younger.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/4/14
2. Virtual Refrigerator Blog Hop 
3. Entertaining and Educational - Quotes and Strewing
4. Collage Friday - We All Need Encouragement
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where I Got Up Early
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (3/8/14)