indian elephant

India today - and elephants (made from the template I concocted a few days ago).

Looks like he's wearing specs!

The howdah is a simple origami box that we learnt how to make ages ago.

aboriginal artwork

Australia today - with a specific look at Aboriginal art. We then attempted to paint our own pics using cotton buds (less messy than fingers!) to apply the paint onto coloured sugar paper.

Our art club sculpture is finally nearing completion.

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.