The short duration Summer English course for 4 to 6 year old children (Day 2) - The 21st. July 2015

Today was a fairly quiet day in which children finished learning the lyrics of one of the Nursery rhyme songs they'll be singing next Friday. We "read" a young readers' story about a blue elephant though the learning was focused on movement, prepositions and continuous forms.

 

 

Forty five minutes before the end of the class they went onto the artistic part of the room so as to finish yesterday artistic works on the theme of animals and initiate others onto the theme of children of the world, having painted, assembled 3D paper animals, made puppet like dolls, used both coloured sand and coloured dough

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The short duration Summer English course for 4 to 6 year old children (Day 1) - The 20th of July 2015

The Summer English course for my colleagues's four and six year old children and grandchildren started today and with it the anxiety on their and my part. Not knowing the children one is going to work with over a short period of time and having to achieve results for Friday, the closing day isn't easy.

I was happily surprised to find out I'd be having three of my former  and most "faithful" students, one of whom was the first one to arrive first thing of the morning.  

The  five new children got easily adapted with just one feeling a little bit tearful throughout the first hour, though they all soon felt at ease, particularly during the artistic activities and the puzzle making to reinforce the names of the animals in English that they had been taught.

Although only three of them managed to finish their Art projects for the day (once it was dependant on the degree of difficulty of the artistic endeavour) the others vowed to patiently wait for the following day to finish theirs.  

(To be continued)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ama-San - Temporary photo exhibition by Cláudia Varejão at Museu do Oriente, Lisboa - The 19th of July 2105

Diving for algae, sea urchins, oysters and pearls has been an activity which women in Japan have been performing for over 2,000 years. The women who sometimes dive as deep as 20 metres without oxygen bottles and any other sophesticated breathing apparatus are known as Ama (which literally stands for women of the sea) and are able to sustain their breathing under water up to two minutes.

 

 

The temporary exhibition I ended up seeing is the result of two trips to the Ise-Shima peninsula in Japan, more precisely to the fishing villages of Wagu, Ijika, Oosatu and Toushijima where Cláudia photographed the Ama-San  and their ongoing activities in what can be considered a rather well documented ethnografic study.

 

 

 

Photographing small framed photos was rather difficult but I still managed to photograph some so as to share them with the online viewers.

 

 

Namban - Retrospective of Cohen Fusé's artistic production - Temporary exhibition at Museu do Oriente, Lisboa - The 19th of July 2015

I headed to Museu do Oriente fairly early so as to see two temporary exhibitions, one of which I had read about. I was almost immediately taken by the explosion of colour and intricate details in Luis Cohen Fusé's paintings.

 

Born in Buenos Aires Fusé has been residing in Portugal for the last three decades and the fact that the exhibition's title is Namban ( a Sino-Japanese word whose generic meaning is alien or outsider) is strongly connected to his life path.

 

In the words of the curator Fernando Alagoa "to contemplate the work of Luis Cohen Fusé implies getting enraptured in the poetry of senses and surrendering to a supreme state of beauty". Whether that resonates with every visitor I don't know but I feel that none will be indifferent to his art, in which the woman is almost always present, in an homage-like type of approach, from oil on canvas or linen to sculpted female figures.

 

I first came across a series of oil on canvas mural type of paintings ...

Amber forever-2011 (left). Blues of desire-2013 (right).

Summer night-2011 (left).

and then another series, this time of oil on linen pertaining to a different period, as I noticed most of the paintings had been painted from 1987 through to 2012 ...

The shining of the wisterias (left). The courtesan of the roses and wasps (right).

The courtesan of the yellow lilies (left). The song of the cicada (right).

The peony courtesan (left). Sayonara dreaming (right).

White and blue-2005 (left). Among the lilies-2011 (right).

Symphony-2014

Lying on a sofa with a black shawl-2013

Sensuality-2010 (left). Odalisc with mirror-2006 (right)

Lost Paradise (left). Nostalgia - water (right)

                                                                   Oniric Instinct





And finally the puppet-like sculpted female figures ...