Crafting with the kiddies!

During this week we have also done lots of art and craft, here are a couple of thier projects that are worth sharing inshaAllah:

You may remember Daisy started this bag from kit eons ago, well it's finally finished.  It was so easy for her to sew as the felt type material was so think and the holes were pre-punched so it was difficult to go wrong. She absolutely loved doing it and is chuffed with the results.  I have been trying to find more kits like this but haven't seen one anywhere.

All together complete with bling

We also found this old storage board in a charity shop and decided to alter it.  Everyone had a hand in this one and it did get a bit messy but it was great fun. The kids learned lots of new techniques and all put their own ideas into how it should look... which involved using lots of my paper flower stash!

Not sure what we will use this for... perhaps storing cards with ideas for those 'bored' moments and other activity type stuff.

Daisy was also tasked with making a musical instrument for Beavers for one of her badges... it was difficult to steer her away from all the string/wind instruments and she didn't want to do a drum as everyone else was doing a drum so we ended up making the trust old maracas out of out of date rice and lentils [everyone gives me their out of date stuff as they know we use them for art etc lol].

After she sellotaped the cups together she glued on torn scraps of wrapping paper [pink of course] with a PVA glue and water mix to decorate it.

Let's see what next week brings as they return to school :o|

Art Journalling

I have been teaching the children some different techniques to make backgrounds for their art journals as they always seem to get stuck on this.  These ones we made by spraying different coloured inks onto a page and then spraying over them with water to help them blend.  We then used stencils to make the 'watermark' kind of patters; you just lay down the stencil and then spray over with water.  You then 'dab' off the water with kitchen role and there you have it.  This just amazed the kids and they loved the effects they came up with.  The kids use cheap scrapbooks from the £1 shop for their journalling so we have to gesso the page first so that the the ink [or whatever medium you use] isn't absorbed into the paper.  Actually, whatever paper we use we gesso it first.

We used ready made inks for our backgrounds but you can make your own using the little bit of ink that is always left in your printer cartridges when you change them [how annoying is that?].  Just mix a little bit with water and put it in a pump spray; you can add mica [the shiney stuff] from make up or the craft shop if you want it to have glimmer.  You can mix different amounts of all the colours to make any colour at all... we learned all this from a fantastic crafting lady on You Tube and you can check out her video here.  It will be worth it as these sprays cost a fortune.  I think though if you want the 'glimmer' to stick to the page you need to add a tiny amount of glue but I think that this lady said it may 'go off' after a while.

Sorry these pics are not great because of the reflections bouncing off the glimmer in the ink sprays but I think you will get the idea of the effect inshaAllah.

Crush put a compass and fleur de lis in this background as he wants to use it for his cub scout stuff.

Daisy also chose the fleur de lis but wanted to make her page about the family - obviously a work in progress!

This is Sprites 2nd page - this time he spread gesso through the stencil to give a raised, textured effect.  He wants this page to be about time inshaAllah.

This is Sprites finished page.  He's not too happy with it but I think it looks great.

This is another page in Daisy's journal.  I think I have showed this before but she insisted it go on again and I do hate to disappoint her lol!

Modelling Fest

We have been really indulging our artsy side this Ramadhan [and beyond] and the kids have been modelling. I mean really modelling. With a passion. They have been modelling with plastic kits; modelling with foam, modelling with card, modelling with wood and tissue. Basically, anything they can get their hands on. They made: masks, knights, planes, tanks, landscapes, terrain for gaming, houses, huts, anything and everything. Here is a small sample of the stuff they have been doing...

A lot of the card models were downloaded free from either Currell Models, Raven's Blight or SS4's Paper Models.

Sunshine after the rain!

So, my new tactic for getting the kids to knuckle down is the promise of something nice after a couple of hours graft doing the things that, as far as they are concerned, are just unnecessary in life! Things such as math and English.  Yeah, those really non essential skills that we never use on a day to day basis.  Fortunately for me this bit of sunshine can include: science, art, crafts, nature walks, baking etc; basically, anything except Math and English.

Bearing this in mind this morning kicked off with some word games that Sprite made a while back.  The 'clue cards' have descriptions of words that the children can either shout, spell or act out once they know what it is. The alphabet cards are used for spelling and the pink cards are from the Jolly Phonics books and are basically spelling/matching games.

We then moved on to making sentences using the DK Silly Sentences game; after making their sentences - which were very, very silly - they had to write them in their books and draw a picture to match.  Sprite didn't quite understand the list of several instructions that I gave [it's a dyslexic thing] so made some mistakes.  I really must remember to give him one or two instructions at a time. They then went on to do their maths on Maths Whizz.

Then after lunch came the sunshine stuff which began with blow painting.  Daisy also wanted to do blow painting in her art journal. And then everyone wanted to do their art journal.  Of course they would!

So here are the aforementioned art journals:

This is Crush's journal page that is based around the pictures they took for the
library's Homeschool Group

This is Daisy's journal page.  She is so creative and has firm ideas about what
she wants to do.  I just love the photo of the doorway.

This is Sprites journal about Spring; obviously!  He does his pages all by himself
with no input from me.  He has used several techniques on the background page
and the flowers are made from old jam tart trays.

We then painted some nice large stones that we found whilst digging up the
garden.

Lego has picked up his Word War 2 project again and completed another two parts to the project.

And last but not least; I found this science kit in the charity shop for £1.50 and thought that it might be nice for the little ones to have a go at.  The box was taped up so when I got home and opened it up I was surprised to see that the kit was completely intact with all the contents still sealed.  So, as it would be neglectful to let such a blessing go by unused, we will start working through the booklet of experiments at some point this week God willing.

Phew, it's now midnight and I am hoping that I can keep the up the pace...goodnight xXx

No more apologies...

for my complete lack of discipline in posting to this blog.....the fact is that I just don't have the time and that's just the way it's gonna have to be until the offspring get full time jobs, will do the housework for me or teach themselves. None of  which I can see happening soon!  I do somehow feel guilty for not posting more regularly and sincerely thank all of you that continue to follow us on our rocky road and I apologise for any and every time now and in the future for my complete tardiness.

Enough of what we haven't been doing; it's time for some of what we have been doing....

Well we have had poorly children all over the place and we have been at home, nursing this horrid virus...one after another they fell, with one symptom fading out and another taking its place...it is never ending but we seem to be on the up now thank God.  But apart from the coughing, headaches and vomiting it has been nice snuggling down and reading lots of books, playing games and drinking lots of hot chocolate.  It has also been very heartening seeing the children that are well taking care of the ones that arent - each with their periods of ups and downs, so sweet!

Not so sweet however, is this armoury of rapid fire rifles made from Lego that fire elastic bands.  While I can admire the boys' technical ability and all round cleverness I am not too happy at the sight of elastic bands left laying all over the house.  And just when you think it's all over hubby, being so impressed with their modelling skills,  went and bought them a whole new box of elastic bands each. Thank you darling. Arrrgh!
 

Lego also made this 'mech' from paper using a template he downloaded here.

They have also been messing about with the box of electrial stuff and Lego built this alarm which operates using touch sensors. 

Inspired by Debbie over at My So Called Life and Other Lies we have also been rolling some candles from natural beeswax sheets.  A fun little activity that kept us all busy for a while. 

I have also ordered my seeds for this year and we are looking forward to a bountiful harvest, by the Grace of Allah, and have a whole garden revamp to begin in the next few weeks, weather & illnesses permitting.  The kids and I are really looking forward to getting going with this and to enjoying the garden when it's finished inshaAllah.

What an exciting week we have had with the children starting with their tutors and mashaAllah, I must say that they had a great time and the tutors have wonderful intentions to help the community. Each of the children were assessed and they all have homework to do, which they did, without being told, as soon as they got home!  The sister also said that if I couldn't afford for them to go more than once a week [I am hoping to send them at least twice a week inshaAllah] that she would give them extra homework.  Alhamdulillah, this has been such a blessing for me; I didn't realise that I was so stressed about it all!

The children also decorated these candles after being inspired by a video we watched on YouTube

They were great fun to make and I think I may be additcted!  Lego also made this papier mache mountain diarama for his Airfix models.

Sprite made himself this Airfix tank!

Daisy made this art journal page.  She used a piece of sponge to dab colour all over the page and then used stick on paper letters and sticky back foam letters to make the words.  She then went on to paint her next to pages all in black....can't wait to see what she's going to do with those lol!

This is Sprites African inspired giraff mask and Daisy's Zebra mask, both of which were inspired by our session at the library's home school group meeting last week.  We also started making some African masks out of paper mache but they made soooo much mess I could hardly bare to look at it let alone immoratlise it in a photograph!

We also made some ghee and learned about it's health benefits and related ahadith.

The kids also made chocolate cake and orange custard, orange in colour not in flavour.  I don't know why they wanted orange custard but it was nice anyway!

Daisy has been doing some more sewing...

I have also spent some time going over the lessons that the children did at the tutoring group to make sure they understand the concepts and am doing more hands on activities to ram the concepts home.  Lego has been doing forces with related formula and long division, the others are brushing up on their times tables and handwriting before they go back to 'school' on Monday inshaAllah.

Well, we are off for a few days off with my family in London. Yay!