As part of the unit on Australian Aboriginal art and culture we decided to have ago at cave painting, well rock painting to be precise. We used the dot painting technique that was originally used in impermanent sand art works. These were used to tell the story of their land to the younger generations. The images formed a language realised through art used to assist story based learning.

Lani’s Dreaming inspired Lizard

Lilly’s Dreaming inspired Kangaroo.

While they were painting I read this book:

Which is a gorgeous book that made me want to jump onto a plane straight away and fly off to Arnhem land.

I have found some pretty cool resources for the book online here and here so we will work though a few of these activities over during the week. Should be fun.

To any of the uninitiated out there Miss Mousy Moo and her hodgepodge of friends are all made from air drying clay which is just the best stuff for entertaining bored little fingers.

The amount of focus that poured out of Lilly during this craft blew me away. The mouse and the snail in the foreground are hers, along with a bunch of lady birds and a cake and pizza. She even researched before she began looking through a few of the twenty odd craft books I have scattered around various book shelves. It is the most focused and dedicated to a task I have ever seen her and I am going to turn back fondly to these photos the next time she turns into a whirling dervish and runs straight into the sharp pointy corner of a wall.
 

Lani on the other hand jumped straight into squeezing the gooey stuff between her fingers. I think she found the squidging squelching and squashing way too appealing to actually stop and waste time forming the clay into recognisable objects. For a while the only thing she had finished was the slug you can see slap bang in the centre of the photo. Sorry to be a bother but I’m going to ask you to scroll back up and have a look…go on have a peek… right now imagine it painted a brownish colour and you can imagine how flustered Glenn was when he came home from work and she was all "Daddy Look What I Made"

Of course she did get productive eventually and made a large red thing with toothpicks in it and a heart pendant for a necklace which she painted pink (Like duh as if any other colour ever existed)

It was naturally Eli’s idea to embed the spiky toothpicks into the art works, I had put them out on the table in the hope that they would be used to create otherwise unachievable intricate details, but I suppose a giant blue echidna is a great use for them too.

We also made some wooden spoon puppets aren’t they just so sweet, well, other than Lilly’s demon possessed yellow glowy eyed one.

And major thrill of these holidays we had a very special blue bear sleep over and stay up way to late with our fuzzy brown lot, but that’s the point of a sleep over really isn’t it.

I had one of those rare moments today were I was completely content to be in my own company, alone in a room, no sounds other that the rhythmic slish slish of my paint brush. Concertinaed into a small oblong of space between the cot we have finally assembled and the chest of draws I was painting green I had nothing in the world to do other than concentrate on covering old with new. Even the sounds from the busy road outside the window melted into the background of my subconscious and tricked my mind into creating images of oceans. Maybe it was the rain softening the swoosh of the cars but if I closed my eyes I could have sworn I was at the beach.

I don’t usually go for green it was Glenn’s choice of colour for the wall in our room that will now double as a nursery, but this isn’t a bright in your face kind of green. Its actually quite dark, a deep dark forest type green and not the type of forests we get in Australia full of friendly little creatures that will pop up to say hello then fill you with venom, no this is more the forest were you picture Robin Hood and is mob hanging about in trees eating berries. A calming green hopefully a baby sleep inducing green.

Now in the future I imagine myself reading this post and wondering why a quiet Saturday afternoon was so noteworthy that I wrote a blog post about it. But when you stop and think about the week I have had with myself two kids one baby and one husband succumbing to the flu probably the swine flu according to our doctor but who cares all flus are serious and some others are more deadly than that piggy one so we don’t bother testing anymore.

If you know anything about families and illnesses they don’t do the sensible thing and all get sick at once no no one child brings something home and is ill, nursed lovingly back to health then on the day that it all looks bright and sunny again child number two sulks up to you leans her snotty nose against your cheek gently coughs in your face and said my head hurts, and so on and so forth until by the end of the week you are waking up five times a night to un clog the babies breathing tubes and wipe off the snot that has somehow dripped up her face into her hair and rock her back to sleep, only to be greeted when the light shines in the windows with a house full of sick, almost recovered, and I’m completely better now and so bored with this very boring family that I’m going to spend all day long bouncing of the walls and singing on the top of my lungs children. The only one of us who hasn’t been sick is Lani and we look at her now like she’s some kind of ticking time bomb.

So now you can understand why a day, where the kids played together quietly with puzzles on the floor and Glenn and Sabrina practiced saying Hello Daddy, just to make sure they are her first words, was so special. And I painted till the sun went down listening to the paintbrush telling me to Shhh Shhh quiet now.