Wednesday 14 September 2011

Australian Art

Art and Design.  

Today we explored some art (other than music).  One of Mr. R's geography questions for our current topic is, "What is the art like in the country?"  Since we're learning about Australia, we spent some time looking at Australian Aboriginal art.  We found out that traditionally paints were made from rocks and plants.  We decided to try and do the same.

Grass, beetroot, frangipani leaves, sandalwood, fresh turmeric, turmeric powder and bicarbonate soda mix, sesame seeds and clay.  We started with pounding each item in the mortar and pestle but that was quite difficult!


The electric blener is much easier.

Black soot from a burning candle.

Mr. R made so many colours!  

Now to try them on some wood...

and paper.  We labled them so we could remember where the colour came from.




I was mucking around with some dots (trying to copy the aboriginal dot style art).  Ramai took over and made a peacock feather!

Can't wait to move on to India.  Someone's already given me some ideas, and I'm sure Mr. R is going to love them.

4 comments:

  1. Wow! The variety of those paints is impressive. I love all the different interactive projects you are using to teach Mr R, he must be having heaps of fun!

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  2. I hope so! I am having too :). You were so much fun to teach and learn with when you were little! So clever, you just absorbed it all.

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  3. That is so nice, where do you get your ideas? how do you know your child's capabilities? I wished I could do stuff like that with my daughter.

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  4. We were researching Australian aboriginal art on the net and we read about how they traditionally used colours found easily in nature to paint with, like rocks, roots, plants and even blood! We thought that could be fun to try and then set out collecting different items to try and make paint with.

    You don't have to worry too much about knowing their exact capabilities (if that's possible). Just watch them as they play and learn and you can get an idea.

    A lot of the time Mr. R and I are learning together. We help each other out and get ideas from each other. As his mother I can support him in an activity. If he's finding something too difficult and it's frustrating him and making him feel incapable that's when I know to step in.

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