Zoe and I got back to doing our Art Day/not Latin this week, in the hope that we can get a bit of routine going after a summer of holiday and other commitments and then Fran heading off for school. Although it won’t always work, this week we did manage to time it so Fran got to join in with some of the day, which was lovely. (She didn’t entirely agree when we made her do Biology GCSE work with us!)
The main part of the day, rather than art, was crafty for a change. I’ve been subscribing to the new magazine Mollie Makes, which a friend suggested to me. The blog rather wonderfully has templates to print out of projects in the issues. We thought we’d start with some cute felt seal critters, as they are the simplest of the projects of this sort so far.
All of them were fabulous (making them into keyrings was the girls’ idea) and suddenly I could really see how much more big and sensible my girls have got. Well, I say that, Fran has avoided doing one and Amelie claims the flippers are too hard to sew on. Josie did the light blue and yellow ones though and Maddy did the greys.
This gives you an idea of the scale when put next to a normal sized needle.
While Zoe supervised and assisted with seal birthing, I did some biology on life processes with the middle three girls. When Fran got back she, Skye and I moved on to reading about respiration.
The rest of the time (while stitching, which was a bit of a distraction) I read Macavity to them. Then we talked through the language and the imagery that makes him more human or more cat like, the rhyme and structure and the mood of the poem.
They’ve done WANTED! posters of him for ‘homework’.
Then, because it’s only right 😉 and because it is very hard to read Macavity without breaking into song, we introduced Poppy and Skye to the CATS! version.
This later prompted the classic quote from Josie “I don’t know why that’s called CATS! when it only has dogs in it.” 🙄
Macavity! I got an English Speaking Award for reciting that, I seem to remember. Although now I don’t remember it at all 🙁
The seals are really cute! I thought you meant real ones. Don’t tell anyone but I don’t really like real seals *sharp intake of breath*
Macavity is my favourite cat!! I wanted to call my cat Macavity, but he’s black and white and we all know that Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin….
The little seals are so cute and I have no idea how you could even being to make something so fiddly! Deft fingers must run in your family!
I shall let you into a secret, I didn’t dare even try!