The Blue Umbrella

A sweet and funny video to watch for our India study

The Jungle Book Part Two

 As I mentioned in an earlier post. Ds has had to prepare a Jungle Book theme diorama.Above you can see some of the trees.

 The next step was to attach the cave(having first removed the balloon of course!)

 Some of the trees were less stable than others9note: make sure you have attached planty of paper mache to your foil!)

 Blue tac was applied to the base of each tree.

 Next the trees were added to the shoe-box

 again this required a lot of patience!!

 Ds decided to add some vines to make it a very jungly diorama. The ones we used were rafia.

 Here is the jungle prior to adding the animals.

 Add the animals.

The completed diorama. Can you tell what scene from the book is taking place?

Monsoon Afternoon

As part of our ongoing study of Asia we read Monsoon Afternoon by Kashmira Sheth.. While this was probably designed for a younger reading age both boys examined the artwork with delight. We liked the note at the end of the book which described how the monsoon in her childhood meant the end of the mango season and the start of school.We nearly always read these notes by authors at the end of books as they either add to the information within the text or as in this case give us a peek into the authors own life. Altogether this is a very pleasant book to read. The text in which the small boy asks his grandfather a series of questions is beautifully complimented by the watercolor paintings of the artist.

The Jungle Book Part 1

 As  part of his grey wolf award for cubs(which is I think the highest award you can receive in cubs) ds had to prepare a diorama of part of the Jungle Book to show to his pack. Cub scouts are very loosely based on the characters in the Jungle books(Baden Powell and Kipling were actually friends)Ds painted the inside of a shoe box a good jungle gree. Next , using advice he gleaned from the internet and other makers of dioramas(!), he made some tree shapes from foil.

 These were then covered with papermache.

 It proved quite a sticky business!

Below are the trees waiting to dry. while they were drying ds covered part of a small balloon with paper mache. This would be the cave of the wolves.

 Finally ds made the figures he was going to put in his jungle. He had to blend plasticine colours together to make just the right wolf colour!

Above you can see the painted box with the figures.