Rock Art
Yesterday started with a bit of a bang. Well, first of all I was really tired from having gone to bed after midnight on Tuesday (got distracted listening to a podcast about the episode when Lost finished) so I wasn’t best pleased to be woken at 6.30am by M shouting up the stairs to ask how to turn on the router. I’d just dozed off again when A shouted up to ask if L had been sitting on the kitchen side the day before. Erm, probably, why? The toaster had just gone bang and all our power went off. L had been playing with the teaspoons and shoved one in the toaster that I didn’t notice. (Toaster is always off at the wall in the day). So that’ll be another £30 for a new toaster.
We got up and sorted eventually and M did some maths and surprised himself I think by doing some fractions in a different book and finding them relatively easy. Which is good, cos he has a bit of an “I can’t do maths, I’m stupid” thing going on recently. Then he did some spelling stuff that he usually really likes, only he had a bit of a fit about spelling “would” because he was totally certain it has a c in it. Not sure what that was all about.
Then we rushed about getting sorted to go out to Norwich castle museum for an art workshop in the afternoon. The plan had been to get there in the morning and look around a bit more (we have annual passes and are doing a bit at a time cos there is loads to look at) and then go in the cafe for lunch. Well we made it in time for lunch and then had about 15 mins to kill before the workshop started, so we went to look at the Boudicca bit again.
The museum has a temporary exhibit Art at the Rockface that the workshop was based on. The workshop leader met everyone and took us to the education room to introduce the plan for the session (they were great with parents staying or going or popping in, which was good with L there) and then everyone went down to the gallery to look at the exhibition and sketch inspirations to take back and make into a collage. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed all the different artwork, sculptures and whatnot. L toddled about and the gallery people were very good with him - I was a bit worried he’d be disturbing some of the people who were looking around (but then the gallery did have 14 kids with clipboards looking for inspiration so it wasn’t that peaceful). They were encouraging families in with a booklet of things to specifically look at and little mats to take round annd sit on while you looked. There was a wide variety of things from old landscapes to sculptures to more modern stuff. I especially liked a large red splodgy picture which was done by putting a large snowball on top of crushed red stone and as it melted it took the pigment down the paper in running patterns. Would love to try that with powder paints. There were some beautifully carved gemstones too. The exhibit is moving to Sheffield at the end of September and I recommend going if you can.
We left M to it when they went back to do their collages and L and I looked around other galleries. We explored the mammals and birds section. I find them both beautiful and completely horrible at the same time. Horrible that they are dead stuffed animals, but amazing to be able to look at them in such detail. L took a shine to the swans and toddled his little legs off exploring.
M enjoyed his art session, particularly because they could crushed up rocks and charcoal and mix them with water and paints to make textured paint and smear it everywhere.
L and I went to sit in on the last 20 mins or so and I got chatting with the woman running the session. She does freelance work and art/green workshops and I thought it might be good to book her for something home ed wise. I got her website details - anyone within travelling distance interested in any of the workshop ideas? She does art of all sorts, puppets, ecological type stuff, beach walks and they are also starting an archeology day where they set up a dig on any piece of land you have so you can have a go at seeing what’s involved in opening a trench etc. I think something arty would be good for a home ed workshop (cos I’m always lacking in arty ideas). Maybe we should bear her in mind as someone we could have to do a session at Kessingland too? (If it’s staying at Kessingland of course).
We walked back to the bus station for the park and ride as soon as the session finished and just avoided the rain. Luckily it had missed our house on the way past and my washing was all dry when we got back.
In the evening once the boys were in bed I finished watching What the bleep do we know (mainly because I ought to post it back today, cos we got our envelopes mixed up when we sent M’s DVD back and Amazon have sent our next one, not his). I started watching it a few days ago and watched the first half hour and was interested, but it was lulling me off to sleep at the same time - wierd. It had the same hypnotic effect last night too, even though I was (mostly) following the arguments. It was one of those films where you’re being sold a certain point of view and some of it sounds a plausible way of looking at things but you never pause long enough or know enough background information to sort out which bits you think are true and which bits you think you would reach different conclusions from. Kind of like reading a scientific paper where they draw conclusions that just don’t follow from the study they’ve done, even though they are what they really would like you to believe they have showed and their arguments sound convincing on the surface, but then you realise they didn’t have proper control groups or something. So I’ll probably ponder on it a bit more and maybe get it again some time to rewatch. Odd how watching it made me feel though, the best description I can give is that it was very like listening to a self hypnosis tape.
Today it’s supposed to rain even more heavily and I arranged last week to meet up with a home ed family new to the area at Gressenhall, so I hope it doesn’t drench us completely!
