recent

On a recent school trip to Hannover we stopped and admired sculptural works by Niki de Saint Phalle - such fantastic colours and exhuberant poses.

Meanwhile in school our y2 dinosaurs are nearing completion. It was a bit of a slog this morning but hopefully they will dry ok and we'll be putting in the pneumatic mechanisms, adding teeth, eyes etc. next week.

even more dino related stuff

Today in y2 we started to papier mache our dinosaurs. We tried to make sure the joins were carefully done, as these are the points that will need to be strongest in order for the pneumatic(!) systems to work effectively.

more dinosaur stuff

In y2 we've begun making dinosaur sculptures that will eventually have mouths that opens and close!
Today we got as far as constructing the armatures - out of boxes, tubes, wood and plenty of Sellotape!

Note: the heads have not yet been attached!

 

dinosaur(2)

Another pic drawn by a y2 child yesterday. 

And almost right with the spelling!

dinosaurs

Y2 have started studying dinosaurs so of course today we used a letter 'A' to draw some!

They drew a 'before' picture at the start (top left) before following simple instructions to create lots of different dinosaur.

Some of these are detailed in my book 'A is for Art' along with step by step guides on how to draw almost anything - copies available in my Etsy and Folksy shops.

dinosaurs finished

Some of the y2's completed their dinosaurs today. They installed the pneumatic systems that work the mouths and added other embellishments - eyes, teeth (making sure they were herbivore teeth!), tongues, claws etc.

 

 

Below is a very short video;

 

 

And now I've figured out how to upload videos, here's the one of my train automaton from a few posts back;

 

Apologies for the wobble at the end - the camera was stuck to a jar lid with blu tack. Must invest in one of those small, table-top tripods!

dinosaurs

 Y2 painted their dinosaurs today. They had free choice of colour scheme as obviously no one knows what colours they actually were.

 

 

We also painted the inside of the mouths prior to adding the pneumatic mechanisms (syringes and plastic tubing!) that will open and close them.

 



And finally, a commission, well more of a request, for a painting of a local town. The reference can be seen on the left - a greatly enlarged and pixelated image, as the original was taken on a phone and had to be printed out. On the right is my stylised version of the scene - hoping to catch a flavour and sense of the original. Collage and acrylics on a canvas board, 18 x 24cm.

BIG 2

It wasn't as messy as it could have been! The children were very sensible and managed to cover large areas of the dinosaurs rather than themselves!

 

 A little wooden peg doll I whittled recently. The joints are tied with elastic making it poseable.

BIG

The calm before the flurry of crepe paper and glue, as we papier mache our huge dinosaurs this afternoon. The T-Rex stands around 5' tall and towers over the littley's!

 

French-made kits and quite expensive so hoping we don't spoil them in our efforts to make them look 'realistic'.

in school

One Y2 class drew postcards of their islands using pens.

 

The other Y2 class painted their clay dinosaurs.

Y5 painted both their compass-drawn flowers (from packets/cereal boxes) and tins (to be used as vases) as part of their recycling studies. We plan to assemble them into finished pieces next week.

more clay stuff

One Y2 class created dinosaurs yesterday. They pushed, pulled and generally bullied the clay into a shape resembling a stegosaurus. Broken lollipop and cocktail sticks were then added for the plates and tail spikes. We'll paint them once they're dry.

 

 

Meanwhile the other Y2 class have been working on an island theme. We painted our clay thumbpot islands and added a card 'house'. When put together en masse they look a bit like the British gas advert on telly, except that ours are on 'water' and not in the air!

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).

recent

The mural on the FS1 wall continues to grow - this is part of the section supposedly showing children at play!

 

In FS2 we've painted, based and rigged our salt dough pirate ships.

In Y1 we painted our clay fish....

....and created underwater seascapes to display them.

In Y2 we began to papier mache the dinosaur heads - ready to take the pneumatic operating system (syringes and plastic tubing!).

maxi beasts

 In y2 today we put a second layer of papier mache onto our dinosaur armatures. The first layer was newspaper, this one was crepe paper. It means we don't have to paint them and it makes for a great texture. The reason why they only have necks is because we're going to make heads that have jaws that open and close by pneumatics! The necks are hollow so that we can fit the syringes and piping down them, out of sight.

 

 

latest idea

Have been tinkering with the 'Keep Calm....' concept. I came up with what you can see in the pic - a card/notelet where you add a doodle using part of the text. I'm thinking of offering these as undoodled blanks in packs of 5/6.

I've thought of posters that have doodles already drawn on them and even considered trying toget celebs/personalities to do versions which would then be auctioned/sold for charity.
Would love to know your thoughts. A big thumbs up or 'think again Fidz' ?

dinosaurs

One of the children and I are currently collaborating on a small book. It's an attempt to get him writing and seems to be working! He chose to do a book about dinosaurs as he's mad keen on them. We take it in turns to do an entry. When we've finished it will be added to our class reading materials. My entry for the book today was a pop-up.

free painting

Had some 'spare' time after finishing our Warholesque self-portraits so we did some 'free' painting. I love the way the children painted beyond their lines and weren't at all bothered about colours flowing and mixing.

school trip

School trip day today - purely educational of course - there just happened to be a few rides at the place we went to! On the way home one of my students drew in my notebook - his favourite subject, a dinosaur. Not bad for an 8 year old- on a moving bus!

dino done!

Managed to complete the dinosaur today, the last day of term. It will have to wait until January to move to its new 'museum' home elsewhere in school.

We like the fact that you can still see the underlying cardboard and unpainted bits of papier mache - a sort of impressionistic dinosaur sculpture!

boxosaurus (2)

Almost complete - just facial details to be painted on. Today we 'textured' the body using cardboard rolls to print a scale effect.