Busy Birthday!

I had a good birthday-very hectic at school. The photographer was in, to take individual and sibling photos-an hour and a quarter we were in the hall-the children were really great considering they had to hang around for that long, but it was a strain! Then we had a particularly loud musical session-I say we-I mean they. I left out my box of instruments because I was going to use them on the carpet, but didn't because of photos. The children have lots of instruments to use normally-but we have these carpet boxes too. They must see them as this restricted and desirable thing because when they got their hands on them today they were loud and exuberant with them for at least an hour. Then I took a headache tablet. Then it was the end of the morning and we had a session of picking the crab apples, before the tree is ripped up next week. They loved that! Now I need to buy preserving jars and attempt to make jelly. This may not work! Yes-another sky picture. The sky is just so amazing in the mornings at the moment as the sun is rising.

I was reading this book at the weekend and it inspired me to do a little painting. It is all about story telling through illustration, as the title suggests. The artist has a very distinctive style which I was not trying to copy, but I did copy the way she often does backgrounds-a layer of acrylic colour, and then a layer of black. I washed off the black a bit, as it was too much, so it left the green showing through. I like doing pictures inspired by books I am reading, and that is one of the suggestions in the book. This one is inspired by the book "The Boy Who Would be a Helicopter' by Vivian Paley. It is fascinating-all about how she uses stories in her classroom. She is the lady I mentioned last week. Reading the book I realise how much more there is to the way she works than the watered down and simplified version told to us at the conference. The book is really making me think about how I teach and how I can be better. Not that I don't think about these things anyway but sometimes you read something that has that effect. Anyway, the picture is the story table, and the helicopter is Jason's, the boy who would be one. The people have gold leaf hair. I love using gold leaf-so luxurious!

Aahh! Tiger looking at me while Cassie looks at her. I like how this picture came out.

I picked the squashes yesterday and they are on the kitchen table looking beautiful. Such lovely colours-greens, yellows and oranges blending together. I picked myself a flower from the garden for my birthday and a seed head from the yellow flags-I love putting flowers on the table-takes me right back to my Wendy house.

Doodle fish-finished today on a background I have had for months-the result of squashing colour between pieces of card.

Finally, I have to show you the two new schools of painting invented at nursery by C. and C.-the splodgist school and the scrawlist. It was near to tidy up time yesterday, and I came back to my watercolour table to find them both speed painting-paint, paint, paint, grab another paper, more frantic painting. None of them had names on, so one of the Charlies helped me decipher who each belonged to. I found I didn't need his help though, as each of the paintings had a distinct style. I suppose it is the way they like to make marks at the moment, but it comes out as style!

Well I have really gone on in this post. It must be because I am one year older.