Week of experimenting with materials and techniques III: air and salt

There are a lot of different techniques to paint with watercolors, we chose to practice with air and salt. To develop  the first activity, blow the colors, we just needed watercolors, paper and straws. And instead of paint with brushes, we used the straws and our lungs:

To develop the next activity, salt painting, we needed glue, salt, paper, brushes and watercolors. First of all we wrote some words with glue in our papers (we decided to write but it is also possible to draw with the glue) and then we sprinkle salt:

When the salt was glued, we started to paint with the watercolors. The color flows through the salt, so we only needed to let the color drips on the salt, not to paint directly. The results were so different and colorful!

Practice new techniques! Discover new materials! Experiment with art!

Al :)

Week of experimenting with materials and techniques II: Smell painting

To continue experimenting with materials and techniques we painted with spices to create a smelling painting.

The spices were:
- garlic
- oregano
- cinnamon
- curry
- paprika
- pepper.


We also combined the color and the smell, so here are the combinations: 

 
We started to smell the spices. There were known spices like garlic or oregano, but there were also unknown spices for the kids, like curry.

The warm colors gave us the idea to draw a warm landscape: a sunset in the desert. Daniel drew a model in the blackboard and he  helped the kids to draw the camels.  After this we could start to paint so the smells were everywhere! Brown (cinnamon) and yellow (garlic) had the strongest smells. The brilliant colors from the tempera and the smells from the spices turned the activity in a funny and interesting sensorial experience.

To finish the activity we hung the paintings in the clothesline to let them dry, here you can see the results:

Practice new techniques! Discover new materials! Experiment with art!
Al :)

Week of experiment with materials and techniques I

For the last week we chose the topic: experimenting with materials and techniques. The idea was to paint and sculpt with materials with different textures, consistencies, smells... And to learn and use non conventional techniques.

- One of my favorite activities was sculpting with shaving foam. Daniel did this activity in the past in kindergartens and I was so interested to try it! 

For this activity we were in the backyard of the house on a long plastic tablecloth. Each kid had a small mountain of shaving foam to create an sculpture with their own hands. The first minutes we just enjoyed the texture of the foam, and also its smell. Dip the hands into the shaving foam is a nice and weird experience. I promise you that it is an amazing texture to experiment with.

 

- We prepared the materials on the table for the next activity: shake the colors. We needed tempera, paper and shoes boxes. We told the kids that they have to stick the paper inside the shoes box with tape. After that we asked the kids to start to paint but they told us that they don't have brushes! "Sorry kids" we said, "Here you have them" and we gave them pingpong balls!

The way to paint is just shake the shoes box with the ping pong ball inside with the color that we chose:

Here are the results!:

Practice new techniques! Discover new materials! Experiment with art!

Al :)

Romania - between worlds and times Ⅰ

Quite at the beginning of the year I had a discussion with a Romanian about why Romania - in some areas - has such a hard time keeping up with Western Europe. In his argumentation he blamed the geographic location of Romania. As far as the researches go back, the territory of today`s Romania has always been torn between two or more forces, passed along, treaten like a puppet, reigned from here then there.
Romania`s position in Europe is very important because it is like a pass-through from Asia, perfectly located at the Black Sea, which offers the possibility for oversea trade. Also, Romania has a very diverse landscape with seaside, as already mentioned, plain and the Carpathian arc which covers most of the country, has very fertile ground and a gold stock in the north-west.
Its busy history with the coming and going of all thinkable peoples, oppression and war and various religions, all that makes Romania what it is now, gives the people their mentality and their appearance.

The Dacians - main actors in early Romanian history
Circa 3500 BC the first notable population occures by the Thracians. About 1500 years later the Dacians develope from a side branch of the Thracians and spread in many areas of the Carpathians where they find fertile ground and gold. Ca. 700 BC the Greeks start to settle down at the Black Sea cost and establish the first cities, like Istros (today`s Histria in the Danube Delta, 657 BC), Tomis (today`s Constanta, 550 BC) and Kallatis (today`s Mangalia, 281 BC). They maintain a constant business with the Dacians with whom they exchange wine, oil, spices and olives for gold, wood, honey, cereal, salt and slaves.
But the apparent harmony and peaceful cooperation shouldn`t last forever.
Admittedly, the Romans are also a popular trade partner for the Dacians, which even have adopted their currency. But the knonowledge of the gold reserves spreads fast in Rome, thus more and more people set off for dacia felix, the happy Dacia, as they use to call it. The first military quarrels between the two peoples already  happen in 61 BC, but the Dacians defend their territory successfully throughout anno domini. Only in the Dacian wars in 101/102 and 105 AD the locals are not able anymore to retain Dacia, because emperor Trajan attacks with an army of 60.000 men. He makes it his principal duty to conquer today`s Romania, but for him the gold stocks are second rate, he wants to extend the Roman Empire to Mesopotamia. Trajan actually reaches Mesopotamia; extensively, he is considered as the best emperor of the Roman Empire, among other things because during his reign the empire underwent the biggest expansion ever.

After the fierce wars the Dacian population is heavily depleted, but the gaps are filled fast by settlers of all over the empire. Since they all speak Latin, Dacia is romanised as fast as no other province. 

I`m aware that the development of languages is highly complex and I`m not informed well about this topic, but I assume that this event was the very basis for Romanian language (if there are no influences of the Thracian language). 

In the 3rd century increasingly Gothic troops attack the Romans, so that emperor Aurelian pulls back behind the Danube. In the left-behind areas is coming up a power vacuum which is only temporarily filled by Asian horse peoples and Slavic tribes. 

Almost thousand years later, in 1241, an attack by the Mongols destroys two thirds of Transylvania`s cities and villages and leads to one hundred years of brutal leadership. This event can be seen as incisive break for further development of the country, because it causes the concentration of all Christian powers.

Together they fight against Turkish and Asian horse people and try to protect especially the thinly populated area of Transylvania. Already since 1150 the Hungarian aristocracy starts to populate this territory with German settlers who are soon called Saxones. They do not only defend Transylvania from offenders, but also establish their own culture and cities, e.g. Cluj, Brasov, Sibiu, Sighisoara and Medias. For a defence strategy, which they know from Franconia and Thuringia, they build around 150 church castles which partially are still well-preserved today. Sometimes up to 1000 persons have to find shelter behind the protecting walls for weeks and are nourished from the big pantries with cereals. Usually most of the men are sent out to fight and the women have to defend the walls by theirselves. Those are rarely uncreative in their duty and put their enemies to flight with cheeky manoeuvres.

The more Saxons and Hungarian aristocracy increase western influences in Transylvania, the bigger grows the gap between them and the Romanians who mostly are adscript peasants. In 1330 Walachia can free itself from the Hungarian sovereignty and soon after also the principality Moldavia gains its independence. 

But it`s not granted them to enjoy their freedom for long ...

What happens next you will be able to read in my next history release, stay tuned!

Miriam

Sidewalk-chalk games:

On a warm and sunny afternoon you don't need so many things to have a lot of fun: a ball and chalks are enough! There are a lot of sidewalk chalk games, for example the traditional Hopscotch or the tic tac throw. On these pictures the kids are playing 4 squares.

Four Squares - How To Play

• Each player stands in one of the four squares.
• To start the game, the player in square four serves the ball by bouncing it in their square once and then hitting it towards one of the other squares. The receiving player then hits the ball to any other player in one of the other squares.
• The ball must bounce in another player's square, and they must hit it to another player before it bounces a second time.
• If a player hits the ball so that it misses another player's square, or fails to hit the ball before the second bounce after it has landed in their square, they are "out".
• When a player is out, the other players move up to take their place, and that player moves to the last square, or to the end of the line, if there are more than four players.
• The object of the game is to move up to and hold the server's position.
  
  

Fruit steps: How to play

• Draw a circle and divide it in spaces. 
• Each player stands in one of the spaces of the circle. Each space has a color.
• One player stands on the center where is written STOP.
• The player on the middle says "I like to eat a fruit with the color..." while the rest of the players run inside the circle. When the player on the middle says the color everyone has to run outside the circle except the person who has this color who has to run to the middle and say STOP.
• When someone says STOP everyone stops and stays in his place. The player in the middle will chose another player and will guess how many steps separates both of them. If he/she is right she will have a point, if is not, the other player has a point. 

The river: How to play

• Draw a long river with some stones of different sizes.
• Each player has to jump on the stones without step in the water.
• Each time the difficulty of the game will increase: jump in pairs, without one leg...

We also drew on the floor!! Some kids wrote beautiful messages, and in different languages!!

Al :)