elephants & basketball

 A pic of this years completed embroidered and appliqued Indian elephant pieces. Each square is approx. 20x20 cm. Felt with added beads, buttons and metal washers.

 

 

 

And 'basketball 'bot' ;

 

A5, ink & pencil on paper.

yay!

Today's doodle celebrates a gutsy performance from the lads last night (retro shirt).

 

 

We've also been working hard on, and have nearly finished, our embroidered/appliqued elephant pieces. Stitched flower patterns, beads and bling (small metal washers) have been added.

stitch

A bit more sewing with the y3's today. The embroidered/applique elephant pieces are coming along nicely. Might even decide to make them into small cushions.

 

 

bridge building

In Y6 we continued with our theme of 'Bridges' in Design Technology and looked at arched structures. After realising that an arch is much stronger than a beam ( using strips of paper across a gap and wooden blocks for weights) we set about making trapezoidal prisms (using a pre-printed net). 

 

 

 

We then tried to see if we could assemble them into arch - it worked - so long as the bottom blocks on each side were glued to the base sheet. Each block held the others in place, just like in a real arch!

 



 

 

We've displayed them alongside our appliqued riverscapes.

 



today

In Y2 (6/7 year olds) we collaged our painted (colour-mixed 'flames') and printed (Tudor houses) pieces into mixed media representations of the Great Fire of London.

 

 

Great expressions on this couples faces as their house and belongings go up in flames.

We've also completed our appliqued/embroidered riverscapes in Y6 (10/11 year olds) - here's a  birds-eye view of part of it.

Meanwhile, I managed to find a bit of time to complete another 'boys playing footy' picture. Spread them out a bit this time and placed them against a wall with a 'chalked on' goal.

get ahead, get a hat

Over the last few weeks our y4's have been busy cutting & stitching felt to make wearable hats. They've used a variety of stitches and techniques to create very presentable headgear - some are even planning to wear them on their Easter holiday!

 

 

 

rivers

We continued to work on our appliqued/embroidered riverscapes today. We made pom-pom bushes in the traditional way using rings of card (although some children found it a bit tricky initially because they made the central holes too large).

 

 

 

 

At the end we laid out some of the pieces on the floor (even though they're not finished yet) just to see how they were looking. Each piece is 15cm square , so this section is about 1 metre long. We think the effect is quite good so far.

 



rivers

In y6 on Friday we started to create stitched/appliqued pieces that, when completed, will be able to be pieced together into a long, collaborative representation of a river course. Each child is making a 15cm square with the river leaving two of the edges at the mid-points. They should fit together so that the river flows from piece to the next.
We made paper patterns, cut the pieces from felt and then sewed them together using both running and 'over' stitches.

 

 

By using different shades of green and blue we are hoping to end up with a whole piece that resembles an aerial view of the countryside.

This is a pic of  'one I did earlier' to show the children what we were after. In the next lesson we'll make pom-pom bushes and add the stitching to the 'river'.

caves

Today we made caves. We started out by making thumb pots, before turning them on their sides and reshaping them into cave-like structures. For added effect we embedded stones and twigs. For 4/5 year olds I think they did really well. They will be used to enhance their literacy work - story-telling.

 

 

The y3's have completed their embroidered applique elephant designs. En masse, pinned up on the wall, they look very effective.

pachyderms

Today has been 'elephant' day! The youngest ones pasted scrunched up paper onto a heavy card backing in anticipation of assembling the dried pieces into an elephant.

 

 

The Y3's completed their appliqued and embroidered Indian elephant motifs. We stitched on beads and washers (!) for leg jewellery.

doodles, elephants & vikings

A couple of recent sketches. The robot conker one was for a lad in my class - he brought me a conker in (!) so I gave him this pic as a thankyou. Well, the 'bot is playing with a sort of nut, so I'm sure it's within international conkering rules!




It's appliqued & embroidered elephant time again for our Indian topic. We made simple patterns from 3x3 grids.



A colleague is 'doing' Vikings. Did a figure based on the simple 'robot' model that I made ages ago. The blob of glue on the front is 'cos I was rushing it!

Got me to thinking that the basic template could be utilised for a whole host of figures/characters with very little effort.

elephants in the room

Computer back and hopefully fixed! A few pics of what we've been up to lately - enlarging images using grids (after looking at Roy Lichtenstein's work) and appliqueing 'decorated' elephant designs (for a topic on India);