Lots of organising! Our new school supplies and art cupboard got decluttered and everything found a new and accessible home:
Reggio inspired materials for discovery tables - frames, mirrors, tinker trays, boards and baskets
Pots and pots of art materials: we still have some glitter but we are going to stop using it now as it's been reported it's a huge polluter of the oceans - a good opportunity to show the kids the impact our choices have on the environment and the animals that we share this planet with. It will be a sacrifice for them as they love the sparkles but what an important life lesson to learn, as worthwhile and important things often take sacrifice.
Tempera, watercolours, acrylics and different size brushes to develop their knowledge of the medium and their ability to express themselves with paint
Readily accessible writing materials for helping yourself - pencils, felt tips, crayons, rulers
This year we added a reading tee-pee: children take a book and chill out in the quiet and cozyness of the tee-pee
Archery has become a regular and much loved activity
Music discovery blanket under the shade of the tree house
Looking out onto one of the children drawing on the easel - self motivated activities and projects are the heart and soul of our day
A fun activity for one of our younger students - imagination and motor skills hard at work as she creates a fun bath time for the doll
Self motivated art by one of the older students inspired by a trip to a decorative garden where we saw a lot of snails
Our new tactile maths activity: the kids love finding the numbers and putting them in the right pockets, they create their own maths problems to solve and we usually combine this with a physical activity like crawling through tunnels to find numbers....
A classic game at school - crawling through tunnels, jumping in tyres and writing on the board or finding a matching letter or number and running back
Dressing up and becoming someone or something else, exploring movement and sound is a key leaning experience especially for young ones!
Our colour wheel with colour blocks and ribbons to explore contrast, colour ranges and the effect of light
One of our older students sat down at the easel and decided to compose her own stories - we love it when kids are able to express their ideas and feel satisfied with what they have created. She did this with no assistance or input from anyone. This student was so proud of her stories she read them aloud to everyone: 'A cat is having a nap on a rug.' 'A green lamp has broken it fell on the rug.' 'Rit Fox is a snow fox he is in his den.' 'Et is a bird she is up a tree, Et is pecking the branch.'
November was the olive harvest and the kids enjoyed picking and collecting the olives to add to the growing pile of olives from our 80 trees
The olive harvest tied nicely into our topic on measuring and the kids enjoyed weighing the olives they had picked and reading the scales before adding the olives to the rest of the harvest
At quiet time the children busy themselves playing inside the tent creating imagination games, doing puzzles or focusing on a construction project. This day the children created a safari park for the passengers on the train to enjoy:
One of our students had been watching a cooking programme and was inspired by all the amazing cakes she had seen the chefs create. So she decided to create her own using play dough and sage leaves from the garden:
Every morning we set up a unique and intriguing set of materials for the children to explore, manipulate and express their ideas. Enjoy our discovery table 'provocations' (to use the Reggio terminology.)
Tinker trays with a variety of beads, buttons, hair ties, ribbons and bells
The black fabric on the table highlights the materials allowing the children to focus on colour, shape and texture
Lentils, blue rice, orange rice and white beans with spades, mirrors and frames allow lots of experimentation and discovery
Later we adapted this to include bottles, funnels and jars for further exploration
One of our younger students get to grips with painted rocks seeing how many she can fit into a jar
Getting creative with pens on mirrors, glitter and pasta stars
Exploring design and engineering with toothpicks, corks, sticky tack, wire, paper clips and more...
'It's a birthday cake!'
Nature inspired tinker tray
One of our older students wanted to highlight the beauty of the stone she found - she decided to frame it simply with red and white petals
Organza fabrics hung up in the olive tree with ribbons that fall down when pulled hard
The children lay the fabrics on the ground and enjoy rolling around on them, soon they begin wrapping each other up in them
And then making patterns and symbols with them - here a snowflake:
Glitter, feathers and buttons on mirrors - textures and colours!
Making a marble run with cardboard tubes and boxes. This was a lot of fun and it was great watching the kids experiment with different angles and lengths of tubes.
Tactile 3D collage, each object carefully placed
Rainbow quilling paper and white stones - what can you do with these materials?
The students start cutting and glueing as they get to grips with this new kind of paper
Coloured craft sticks and decorative buttons - simple materials that can create beautiful designs
A giraffe under the sun next to plants for eating and a river at its feet
Exploring autumnal colours
Sparkling gems on the black tablecloth looked like ice glistening on a wintry day
Closer inspection of the shape of a gem using a magnifying glass
After quiet time the children embark on some process art projects to build their skills with different mediums and give them the chance to express their unique ideas.
Printing with leaves. One student decided to use multiple colours on each leaf to beautiful effect which in turn inspired the other students to do the same. They discussed the different techniques they could use to do this most successfully.
Salad spinners, paint, pipettes and wooden beads. The children placed a number of beads in the spinner, sucked up the paint using the pipette and dripped the paint on to the beads. Then they closed the lids on the spinners and started spinning!
Beautiful beads!
We were learning how to identify plants and trees from their leaves so we did a project where we painted different leaves after identifying them and then hung them on to a painted branch.
One of our favourite new books last term was 'ish' by Peter H. Reynolds, a story about a little boy who learns to take joy in doing things '-ishly', letting go and being proud of what you can create without worrying about being perfect. So we decided to make our own 'ish' paintings!
While exploring musical instruments we made our own tom tom drums using recycled materials:
A group art project - together the children painted an old tyre using acrylic paints to add to our school playground
Another much loved book last term was 'The Bear & The Piano' by David Litchfield. The children chose their favourite illustration and placed tracing paper over the page and then coloured the image with watercolour pencils and decorated them with glitter and sequins to reflect the beauty and magic of the story.
Rolling pin print painting!
Afterwards we talked about how we could identify which piece of art belonged to which person since each student has a set of favourite colours they preferred to use. We discussed the word 'palette' and how to use it in this context.
Exploring music more we made maracas using papier-mache and filled them with popping corn kernels. This project took several days, here they are drying in the sun.
The children chose their favourite fabric from the box and we cut out the first letter of their name from black card and they decorated the frame.
After we finished this project there were lots of bits of black card left over. One of the children saw it and started placing the different pieces together to create a new piece of art. 'A brontosaurus!' he cried. He decided to create further dinosaur forms from the bits of scrap paper on the table and then asked for colours, sequins and glue to put his creations together.
A self motivated, designed and executed dinosaur art project
Multi coloured ice paints!
The children loved working with these paints: seeing the patterns of colour they left on the paper and how the patterns changed as the paint began to melt in their hands
We did a project about what it means to be a good friend and how to make friends so we asked the children to work on an art project with each student at the school to encourage communication, respect and cooperation. They had 20 minutes to discuss and decide what they were going to create and then they began on their project together all the time communicating what they were making and what they should do next to create the picture they wanted.
'A jungle scene'
'Scooby Doo family'
As the end of term approached we did a few festive projects to celebrate the coming holidays: sparkly reindeer ornaments
Festive snowmen greeting cards created using stencils
This term we introduced excursion days. Every Monday we go into the city or to a farm and visit museums, gardens and workshops. It's a chance for the children to leave the school environment and get out into the community and use their language skills in 'real life' situations. Here is a selection of photos from our excursion days:
At Jardin Majorelle
At Jardin Anima
At Le Jardin Secret
Watching a short film about how the garden was restored
Discovering the piano and the guitar
Discovering different dance genres
Visiting the workshop of Moroccan artist Larbi Cherkaoui - the children viewed his works, learned about the materials used to make the work (mainly goat skin parchment and henna) and then had a chance to create their own works
Working with henna on goat skin - it was left to absorb and then washed off to reveal differing hues of orange and red
Larbi Cherkaoui gives the girls some pointers on working with henna
A visit to the Heritage Museum of Marrakech - here is ink made from dried sheep droppings and ash. The children loved this and got a chance to practice using these materials from the past.
Finally we visited the accropark where the children had lots of fun and really built their confidence as they had to take responsibility for their safety, use their judgement and test their physical skills of strength and balance. They did very well.
And of course no Hayati Homeschool blog post would be complete without pictures of yummy food!
Child crafted pizzas in the oven!
Yoghurt and creme fraiche pots with raspberries and crushed biscuits - made by the kids
Mixed veggie pizza rolls with fresh basil leaves picked from the garden -made by the kids
Typical Hayati Homeschool lunch - tomato, cucumber, pomegranate and coriander salad, beetroot salad and fresh green beans
Served with cream cheese and 3 herb (parsley, thyme, rosemary) briouates - made by the kids
Spiced ginger safari biscuits getting iced with natural food colouring
Walnut veggie burgers (made by the kids) served with oven chips, home made tomato sauce and a green bean, cucumber and pomegranate salad
It was a cold rainy autumn day and so we gave the kids dark hot chocolate, fresh cream, courgette cardamom brownies and fresh strawberries for their afternoon snack
Strawberry cheesecake made by the kids
Ingredients ready to make our festive chocolate rocky road - biscuits, raisins, apricots, pumpkin seeds and almonds
Hope you enjoyed this monster post. School begins tomorrow and we are jumping into 2018 with renewed energy from the holidays!
