Art and crafts

Hubby complained, okay reminded me, that I haven't blogged for a while. :p

I'm quite tired of editing pictures of our outings. So I'll put up some pictures of the kids' artwork.

After a very long procrastination, I finally continued our CL homelearning lessons on transportation. (Linette, I'm still too lazy to type in chinese...Heh)

First, I showed them the word cards of 飞 and 机. Focusing on the word 飞, I asked them what flies. Mandy was able to say 鸟 and 飞机. She said helicopter too. I told her I can fly too. "Watch me!" I said while I jumped and flapped my arms. The kids laughed and tried to imitate my failed attempt at flying.

"咦, 我们不能飞啊! 为什么呢?" "啊! 这是手啊! 不是翅膀! 鸟有翅膀吗? 飞机呢? 直升机呢?" Mandy said helicopters' wings are the ones spinning on top. I told her those are rotor blades, 螺旋桨(finally found out what it's called!) They don't look like wings but they help the helicopter fly.

"鸟和飞机都有翅膀. 翅膀让它们飞! 你看! '飞' 字也有翅膀!"

I made detachable 'wings' to let the kids stick to complete the word. I pointed out that the 钩 looks like a tail.

Then we did a simple craft of assembling the body (机身), wings (机翼) and tail  (机尾) of the aeroplane. They also drew suns, birds and sponged painted white clouds over the blue sky.

Mandy's:

She said the plane flew into the clouds.

Barry's:

That cheeky boy painted all over the words. Mandy wanted big clouds, Barry wanted small clouds. Both turned out very nice! :)

The girl drew a watermelon the other day.

I realised she wouldn't draw if I don't teach her. So I drew one watermelon and she followed step by step. She drew and coloured herself nevertheless. I guess I was too insistent on her coming out with drawings by herself and that stressed her greatly. Now she likes drawing more and because I'm there to guide her, she draws with more confidence and interest.

The zigzag lines were difficult. And it was a bit tricky getting her to alternate the dark and light green properly. But what do you know? Her watermelon turned out way nicer than mine! I love it!

Then, I spelt 'watermelon' for her to write. She was so proud of her work!

I think drawing fruits is a wonderful way to get her to learn patterning (lots of fruits have patterns!) and practise her lowercase writing! And it's easy to pique her interest since she loves fruits so much. It's also about the only thing that works with the boy when it comes to drawing. He refused to draw though, crying that he cannot colour properly and gave up. Haiz.

The girl also attended a 2 hour mixed media art class at the CC, with Philson and his cousin last week.

I was apprehensive because besides school, she's never attended anything by herself. I wanted to use this lesson as gauge to see if she was ok with attending outside classes herself and if she was interested.

She loved it!

The first thing she said out of the classroom was "Mama, I come to this school next time? Is this my school?" She said she liked the class and wanted to attend it again. Whoopee!

Here's what she did in class:

A lot of it was the teacher's work, I could tell. And especially since all 3 kids took out almost identical artworks. Ha! Nevertheless, it was still good exposure.

So now, I'm looking out for art classes for her. And swimming classes. And... I've already signed her up for music classes. Ha. Ya ya, I know. Slowly... I'm just saying...