THE Art Show....

It has been a busy few days, starting with Thursday when I had to go into the yochien to prepare for the art show, which entailed sticking all the kids art work onto pieces of brown paper, we had little card rulers to that they were spaced properly then all the big sheets are hung. Every classroom and the main hall is turned into part of the gallery.

The yochien is very much into art and this year I understood more of what goes into it all. For the cows, the older classes go out for the morning on the bus to where ever the cows are. They take their oil pastels and sketch the cow they want to paint, then when they get back to the yochien they paint the cows and these are big pieces of paper! and the kids are encouraged to fill the whole paper. It was amusing to see how many kids had included their cow doing their 'business'

This is the main hall. The yochien also invites three artist to view all the work. One is a sculptor, one a book illustrator and the third an artist. They mark the kids work with stickers, Ebi-kun got a couple of gold stickers so he was very chuffed. They don't however have a grand prize or make it anyway competitive.

The older kids also get to paint on glass, first they do a test painting then some kids are give the big pieces to paint on, Ebi-kun actually missed the glass painting day but sensei let him do one another day.

This is ebi-kuns whale, you can choose whether to buy the glass painting if not the glass gets cleaned and used the next year.

They also do carving and printmaking, these ones are carved in wood, my mind boggles to thing of 20 small children, one sensei and lots of sharp carving tools! 

The yochien has quite an menagerie of animals and birds so the kids get to study the various creatures, they have 3 peacocks so for this picture Ebi-kun sat outside with his pastels and drew the peacock, the male is a right poser and almost always has his tail out. Ebi-kun says that in the morning when the kids arrive by bus the peacock is always showing off his tail - so cool!

A wall of sunflowers, the kids study these in the garden then come back to paint but they are free to go out and look again if they want to.

They also do abstract work, these are using oil pastel (favoured at yochiens here over wax crayons and after using them myself I understand why, they are far more vibrant and softer to use)

Plus mosaics made from fabric scraps, last year they did something similar but with paper.

And finally, the clay room. This is ebi-kuns stegosaurus for which he got a gold sticker, again you have the option to buy them but they are not fired, it weighs a tonne and we have no where to keep it so I took a load of photos instead! Once I get all his artwork back at the end of the year I will make a new art book like this one.

The whole event is taken very seriously, the yochien is open for viewing for three days and in each class there is a beautiful flower display, I think they are done by the ikabana mothers circle. Yesterday was the autumn festival, more on that tomorrow then Wednesday I have to go in again and clean everything up.