Michelangelo Day...

This was a BIG day so I will list all the resources again at the end of the post. We decided to go the whole hog and do Italian the whole day, this included speaking Italian, although neither of us can speak Italian so it just meant peppering sentences with any random Italian words and talking in an bad Italian accent - amusing if not educational!

We started the day with a traditional Italian breakfast, this is what I ate with the kids I taught when I lived there, milk with biscuits dropped in it, then you scoop the biscuits out with a spoon - took me straight back to Pescara, I don't think I have eaten this since I left. Ebi-kun thought it was a great breakfast and that we should eat it more often.

Next up, we made tiramisu for later in the day (not exactly sounding like the healthiest of days so far...)

So, we left that in the fridge and moved on to more important matters...

Fresco painting! We mixed up some plaster of Paris and poured it into some clean food trays, Ebi-kun played with one of the neighbours whilst we waited for it to dry, since we didn't want it to dry out completely.

He used watercolours to paint with and said he quite liked it but you have to work quickly because the plaster starts to dry.

We did try and put hooks in the back but it didn't work, so we decided to use this just as experimental art.

We had a break for lunch, which was some left over spinach roulade, parma ham and mozzarella & tomato. Then we read Michelangelo by Mike Venezia, we have quite a few of the books from this series now. I like how they are not overly simplified and have enough meat in them to get the child interested but they also don't get too bogged down with details so the child gets bored.

Available from Amazon or The Book Depository

We also watched this a series about Michelangelo from the BBC on YouTube.

And this shorter Horrible Histories one...

As we worked we also listened to this Renaissance music. Next was to paint the Sistine Chapel or at least the underside of the table....
If you do this, then use a splash mat - it did get very messy and I am glad I got Ebi-kun to do it without his t-shirt, it is a good job kids come washable.

Here is the finished master piece, still taped to the underside of the table....

Whilst Ebi-kun was painting, I discovered this great site where you can see the whole of the Sistine Chapel, virtually, very cool and a must do, if you are studying  the same thing. We finished off the day with homemade calzone and a nice glass of Italian white (I did that is, not the boy!)

Resources:

Virtual tour of Sistine Chapel

Discovering Great Artists (the art ideas came from this book)

Michelangelo by Mike Venezia

BBC documentary on youtube