end of the year

School finishes for the summer hols today! No more posts for a few weeks because we've not got a connection in deepest, darkest France.
Enjoy your summer wherever you may be.

this week

As school draws to a close - though we don't finish until next wed - we've been busy creating yet more masterpieces!

As a whole school we created a plethora of patterned squares using pens, crayons, glitter, sequins, buttons and all manner of other bits and pieces. These were then glued onto pre-drawn paper patterns. The result can be seen below - it all occupies what was once just a blank expanse of yellow wall. Can you spot the homage to Morecombe & Wise ?

 

 

 

Each figure is about 150 cm tall - each square is 10x10cm.

 



 

 

In y5 today we were inspired by the work of Kandinsky. We used watercolours to create our own abstracts.

 



 

This one is called 'Le Tour'. Can you pick out the bicycles and the yellow jersey amid the chaos that is the peleton?



 

And finally ... here are a couple of pics of what will be my new art room! This is a view from the doorway - the windows stretch the length of the far wall, so plenty of natural light. I'll need to fit upwards of 30 children + desks, stools etc in here as well as storage.

 

 

And this is the view from the opposite corner back towards the door. It's very much a blank canvas (I've tried to remove all trace of it being the former FS2 room!) - I can't wait to put my stamp on it and turn it into a welcoming, creative learning environment.

  

 

this past week

This last week was mainly taken up with going back to UK and back for my son's graduation, so I was only in school for a couple of days - I could get used to that!

The mural on the FS1 wall is now finished - I hope. Barring rain storms and helpful little hands touching the paint to see if it's dry, it should be ok to varnish this week.

 

 

Fruits & veg

Transport

Children playing

And, as a thankyou for the children in my Enterprise club, who've been busy this year making things to sell at our school fairs, I've made some robot pencil toppers. Wooden bobbin bodies, shaped 'lollipop' arms - jointed using thread and beads, wooden bead heads and screw in eyelets for antennae.

watercolours

In Y5 this week we looked at the work of Henri Rousseau. In particular, his 'jungle' paintings. The class have been studying a 'Green' themed curriculum, as in environment/recycle/reuse/repurpose etc. We noted how certain motifs and shapes repeated themselves. I explained that he was a regular visitor to the Botanical Gardens in Paris and that he studied wild/exotic animals both 'live' in zoos and as stuffed artefacts!

We then had a go at creating our own rainforest paintings. We put down washes of blue and green and then went to town with a wide variety of leaf shapes and shades of green.

 

We added stripes of orange and black to suggest a tiger lurking in the undergrowth.

more poetry

Covering again today so, following on the success of yesterday - did another poem! We're having quite a big turn over of pupils at the moment with lots leaving and quite a few arriving. We decided to do a poem about a new (fictitious) classmate. Each line/page is supposed to be read in a questioning tone;

 

Did you spot the spelling mistake in my dummy draft? Must have had brain fade by that point. Again, the 'book' was created from one (A3) sheet of paper with the same pop-up mechanism - but this time with the addition of the 'fire' coming out of the dragons mouth!

poetry

At short notice today I had to cover one of our Y2 classes. They've been studying dinosaurs and are about to do a Literacy unit on poetry - so I combined them and, together, we created a collaborative poem. After brainstorming rhyming words we drafted out a simple 4 line poem. I then showed them how it could be presented as a small booklet where the surprise (the loud roar) isn't revealed until the last page by means of a pop-up! This is my example that I quickly mocked up whilst the children were in assembly. I guided them step by step through creating their own - which they eagerly took home at the end of the day to 'scare' their parents!

 

Front cover;

 

 
This pic shows how we constructed the book from a single sheet (the standard origami book).