Art and basketball

As I wrote here, Mulan and Miya's music was our first activity to finish this year.

Our next two activities to finish were art and basketball, which had their last sessions yesterday.  Both of these were held at the Northcote YMCA through HASCA.

Art:
Back in China two years ago, the girls attended an art class, where they learnt about famous art works as well as created their own masterpieces.  It was well worth it, and I could see that Mulan especially picked up some good techniques during the year she attended.  (Miya was a little young, and only attended a few lessons.)

But since moving to New Zealand, the only art the girls had done had been at home.  That is, until they started an art class this term.

The girls have enjoyed the lessons, and it has been a good experience for them.  The overall theme of the course was animals, and each weekly lesson was about a different animal.

At the beginning of each lesson, the class gathered together while the teacher showed some computer printouts of artworks depicting the animal of the week.  This might range from cave drawings, to sculptures, to paintings, to tapestries, to ceramics.

While this was a nice intro, I sometimes felt that the discussions were a little on the light side.  The girls' art teacher in China had also done a similar thing, though I think they analysed the techniques more to understand better the methods used to produce the artworks shown.  In China, they also showed the artworks on a big screen computer rather than an A4 printout, meaning that they could see more detail.

After the art history intro, the class then turned to producing their own artwork.  All works were paper based.  Here is about half of the girls' work produced this term; the other half is fairly similar:

(In case you are wondering, Miya's is on the left door and Mulan's is on the right.)

While the classes were good and enjoyable, we have decided not to return in 2017.  The main reason is that we feel that we overdid things a bit this term, and we need to cut back on our outside activities.  Of the classes that we do, we feel that this has probably been the least important and the least value for money.  (For the size of the class, we feel that it is a little overpriced, when compared with other classes we do and also the classes we teach.  This art teacher is probably getting twice the hourly rate that Mama is getting.)

Basketball:
This is an activity that Mulan is doing without Miya.  She started basketball in term 3 this year, after getting dragged along there by her netball teammates.

Prior to this, Mulan had done pretty much zero basketball in her life, although she had done two seasons of netball.  So, it was a bit of an adjustment for her, learning how to bounce the ball and getting used to the faster in-your-face approach.  She has done really well, and is steadily getting the hang of the game.

Each week, Mulan does one hour of skills training followed by a 30-minute team practice and followed by a 30-minute game.  After all this, on our bike ride home Mulan often comments that her legs are pretty wobbly from all the running around.

Mulan's basketball team did very well, winning their grade competition.  Their prize-giving was last Thursday.

Mulan is loving basketball and we plan on doing it again in 2017.