Home Sweet Holmes Art Gallery

Over the past 10 months we've been looking at famous artists and have created our own art gallery.

We used the books Sister Wendy's 1000 masterpieces and Usbourne Art treasury.
Working with pencil, pen, ink, chalks, wax crayons, oil pastels, watercolours and poster paints we created our works of art.

Our works of art inspired by Van Gogh, Hokusai, Avercamp, Klee, Rousseau, Whistler, Kandinsky, Degas, O'keeffe, Pollock and Turner.

Huge poppies inspired by Georgia O'keefe, who took tiny flowers and created huge paintings. O'keeffe said 'Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time -and to see takes time... So I said to myself: I'll paint what I see -what the flower is to me- but I'll paint it big... I'll make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers'
Smokey, splattery firework pictures inspired by James Whistler and Van gogh's 'The starry night'.

Jungle scenes inspired by 'Monkeys in an orange grove' by Henri Rousseau and Squares with concentric circles by Kandinsky

Dancers in blue (after Degas)

Inspired by Lavender Mist by Jackson Pollock. I was amazed as to how tricky it is to produce a splattery picture. It's SO difficult. I definitely now have more respect for abstract artists.

Thanks for visiting our art gallery, please sign our visitor book, via the comments box...

Educational visit to Pizza Express

Today we went on an educational visit to Pizza express.

The children were each given a pizza base covered in tomato sauce.

Toppings were added

and a handful of cheese.

The pizza were cooked in the oven at 400 degrees for 3 minutes.

These ovens come from Sweden and each oven can hold 12 pizzas.

Looks delicious...

smells amazing...

Tastes divine!!

After a lunch of pizza, we went for a behind the scenes tour of pizza Express. We saw the office, kitchen, fridges and freezers. The children saw food hygiene in action:e.g. how food is stored and special precautions for nut allergies.We saw the weekly takings and how much is spent per week on food. They also have a calendar with events such as film releases, so they can predict busy times in the restaurant.

A really informative, educational visit.

Inspired by the costings explained to us in the visit, I planned to make smoothie with the children and then let them do the costing. Reuben bought the ingredients. He loves weighing the fruit and then using the initial letter to find the fruit on the screen.

Banana, frozen raspberries, fat free yogurt and milk.

The girls decided the ingredient quantities for the smoothie and, because we were working out the price, they weighed them.

Then we found the prices on the receipt.

This is how I explained the workings to the girls,
We took 150g of raspberries from the 350g pot of raspberries.
We wrote this as a fraction 150/350
The raspberries cost £2, which we converted to 200p.
The final sum was 150/350 x 200.
The numbers didn't come out as whole numbers,
so they had to round up or down the numbers.
After one example the girls could work out the cost of the banana, yogurt and milk.

Enough of maths, time to blend the smoothie!

We made 980ml of smoothie for £1.50

Cheers!

Worsbrough Country Park - First Bluebells of 2012

We took a much needed break from our weekend of decorating, de-cluttering, bedroom moving, gardening and so on and so on...

and took a walk through Worsbrough country park.

The woods are covered in a beautiful carpet of Bluebells.

Once Spring arrives, we begin to look forward to the arrival of Bluebells.

Reuben and Rosanna loved exploring the various paths,
going off on their many adventures, Tree Fu Tom style!

Rescuing big sis!

Don't wobble and squash the Bluebells.

Goose grass camouflage

I love the feel of ancient woodland, it feels so magical.

The river Dove winds through the wood.

Brave girl!

Dare you pick up a stinging nettle?
(only try this with white flowered ones,
they are actually dead nettles, not stinging nettles.)

The looming clouds and threat of more April showers brought our walk to an end.

The good thing about chilly days is warming up back home with hot chocolate!

Lemonade Stand

After the home ed sports session on Friday, we went to M&S cafe to relax, revive and refresh!
The children love it there. They get to play 'lemonade stall' in real life. Well they make lemonade. In the cafe there is a free supply of water, lemon, sugar and ice cubes.

Woodland junior school website has a lemonade stall game, in which you have to run a lemonade stall for 20 virtual 'days'.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Games/educational/maths/index.html

I think experimenting making lemonade gives the children a better understanding of the game.
But, please don't all rush to M&S cafe!

First freshly laid egg of 2012!

Today, we got our first egg from our new hens.

dippy egg and soldiers!

Happy unbirthday

A big thanks to my neighbour for this tasty birthday cake, it gave Rosanna the opportunity to have another birthday!
While looking through the dictionary we found the term 'unbirthday', and here are the entries:
(a) any day other than one's birthday
(b) an unbirthday present (coined by Lewis Caroll in through the looking-glass).

So, if it's not your birthday today have a very happy unbirthday!

Happy Birthday Dear Daddy!

On good Friday, Geoff turned 45!

After a picnic in the car,

we treated him to a trip to Wigfield farm!

They've got some new pet dogs at the farm.

Not really sure about dogs on a farm visit.

Old donkeys and...

New arrivals.

It was so cold we went inside to do some crafts.

We were really excited to find a poem, we used to read to Immy when she was little. Some how or other the book got lost and the poem forgotten.
It begins with:
November grey end of day,
mist time, smoke time, rabbit time, magic time.

Lovely clean paint,

which didn't last very long!

It had all started so well!


Imogen's got to THAT age!

Back home, the girls made lemon drizzle cake.

Happy Birthday to Daddy ...

and then Rosanna (who has more birthdays than the Queen!)

Happy Birthday Dear Daddy!
x