totems

As part of our Arts week (theme - cultural diversity) we looked at Canada today. Ended by making our own personal totems out of card. Simple cuboids covered with representational and symbolic images and patterns etc.

elephant

This coming week we're having a Big Arts Week across the school where each year group have picked a race, country or culture to tie in with our theme of cultural diversity. In year 3 we're following up our Victorian topic by looking at the Empire that became the Commonwealth. We're going to look at Canada, Australia, India and Africa - specifically the arts and culture of these places. We'll obviously only barely scratch the surface but it might spark interests off. For our look at India I mocked up a possible card model for an elephant.The children could either produce a decorated one, as might be found at a festival or possibly one with a howdah on its back (days of the raj etc.) or just make it 'natural'.

a dramatic interlude

Today my Y3 class were fortunate to experience a 'mask' workshop. They were guided through this by the Performing Arts Consultant and a couple of students from a local school - who are pursuing their Silver Arts Awards. Arts Awards are open to anyone between the ages of 11 and 25, so unfortunately that counts me out. Check out; http://www.artsaward.org.uk/site/?id=64 for further details. The masks are a resource available from Trestle Theatre; http://www.trestle.org.uk/p81.html

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!

arty science

Today, post-inspection we went a bit creative in science. To cover forces, pushes & pulls - we applied the same to a lump of clay each. We'll let them dry and then paint (or not). It enabled the kinaesthetic learners to engage a bit more and allowed the creatives to explore things away from the printed page. Oh, and we thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

Almost coral-like this piece. I can feel some 'temporary' metal paperclip sculptures coming on when we get to using magnets.

display

Sorry for anyone who keeps tabs on this blog - I've been a little tardy in posting - we've had a big inspection at school (anyone who knows about the UK education system will know exactly what I'm on about). It ended today!!

Managed to get a couple of photos of the y2 displays in our school - I wish they'd ease up so the rest of us can try to at least emulate them!

They've got a bit of a seaside theme going on at the moment and model lighthouses seem to be springing up all over school.

gymnastic sculpture

Managed to get thus far with our large papier mache sculptures in art club. Maybe another layer will do it and then we can paint! This shows one figure doing a 'crab', supported by another seated.

In y3 today we looked at paintings by William Powell Frith. Over the next 3 weeks or so we are aiming to create pictures in a similar vein. Started off by sketching crowds of stylised people using overlaps. This pic shows a before and then an after (instruction & input) sketch.