Rock Week, Day Three

Welcome to today's rock stories. This is the rock that inspired my screen printing. I find the shape and construction fascinating. If anyone can shed any light on what kind it is or how it was formed, I would be grateful! It is in three sections with joins between, and is amber coloured in the middle and grey on either end. What is it?!

This is a little wooden filing cabinet-40cm high-that I rescued from the bins at work years ago. I have another one that is decorated with graffiti designs. This one has my favourite type of pebble-those ones with the little white lines criss-crossing them. These are all portraits of actual pebbles-I think mainly lost by now. I had to strip the little cabinet of its weird snakeskin imitation paper covering before painting it. The little drawer label holders are metal.

This pebble is chalk-it is light and very open in texture, and floated in the bath. I found it, and the little blue foam ball near to each other on a beach in Suffolk. We were staying on Shingle Street-a street of higgledy piggledy houses on the beach. There was a Martello tower just down the path and the house we were in was something to do with the lifeboats I think. We were staying with our friends Philip and Wendy. It was a lovely weekend-and good beach combing-everything was very bleached looking. There was the possibility of finding pieces of amber too as an artist that had lived there for years and had collected pieces of it, had recently put them all back into the sea (a bit like you Allegra!)

When we were sitting by the campfire in the evening, I made this little sculpture by carving a little hole and fitting the foam into it. I still like this as it has such lovely memories attached.

H.'s rock.

Last year I had a little boy called H. in my class. He is a little rough and tumble sort of boy, really energetic and excitable and very enthusiastic about everything. One day he came to school with this, rushing to show me his rock! I was so pleased to find a fellow rock enthusiast!

Somehow it ended up on my desk as a very effective paper weight-so it is going back to school with me tomorrow.

These last two photos are of a piece of white quartz which has a layer of pyrites (spelling?!) either side. When I saw the photo, the way the light caught the gold coloured metalic parts made me think of galaxies. So I cropped them to see the effect, and like it!
Last of all, I was doing some planning today, for the next two weeks and I wanted to find some circle songs from around the world (I do get so bored of ring-roses!-and I am sure the children do too!) I found a site with songs from all over the world-Mama Lisa's. I had a look at the songs from Ghana and the first song I found was about rocks! It was fate. I am doing the song next week. Some of the songs on the site have tunes-this one does, I want to investigate further as there seemed to be loads.

Here is the song for any other singers out there!

Obwisana sa nana The rock has crushed my hand Grandma

Obwisana sa The rock has crushed my hand

Obwisana sa nana The rock has crushed my hand Grandma

Obwisana sa The rock has crushed my hand

You pass a stone around, singing and tapping it in time.

See you tomorrow. Visit Graciel to see more rocks!