Showcasing Art
Nursery
In Nursery the children have been reading The Gruffalo. As an art activity the children have been learning how to choose suitable equipment for painting. They painted the Gruffalo with a big paintbrush and added detail using a fine brush. They are practicing a tripod grip, holding their paintbrushes like a pencil. The children also used the appropriate colours to add correct feature details to their illustrations.
Reception
In Reception class the children used clay to explore texture and materials making a dinosaur head outdoors. The decorated their dinosaur heads with natural materials collected in the woodland area, and talked about their dinosaurs using names and correct vocabulary. They went on a dinosaur hunt and began to evaluate other children’s learning, thinking about whether they could tell if a head was that of a carnivore or herbivore.
Year 1
In Year 1 as part of their Katie Morag topic, the children have been comparing living on the Isle of Coll and living in Morley. As part of this comparison the children walked into Morley and looked at the buildings, and in particular the Town Hall, inside and out.
They used their sketch books to explore pencil line drawings of the outside of the building, concentrating on the details of the architecture, and looking at the best way to draw the steps leading up to the doors, which would show a sense of the size and perspective of the building. The children then developed their sketches on return to the classroom.
Year 2
In Year 2 the children have been reading The Stone Age Boy and Ugg and learning about how families survived living in caves. They looked at primitive artwork on cave walls and used chalk to reproduce these. They also compared these with the primitive style of L.S Lowry and used their sketch books to explore Lowry’s style, annotating what they could see, and sketch their own Lowry style picture of cave life. The children also learned how to make simple thumb pots with clay, and decorated these with tools.
Year 3
In Year three the children have been studying the paintings of Margaret Mee, linking to their rainforest topic. They have drawn flowers in the style of Mee and used the Austin’s butterfly method to talk about and improve their paintings. The children learned how to use the water colour pencils, crayoning and altering the effect with water, to make pictures of the ‘Moonflower’ for their calendar images. The children explored their designs in their sketch books first, practising and perfecting their techniques.
Year 4
In their African topic, for the book ‘The Fastest boy in the World’, Year 4 made collages showing African sunsets and clay African inspired masks.
The children explored colour mixing for the sunsets in their sketch books and made designs for their African masks. The children carefully drew and cut out animal silhouettes for their collages and they built on their mask designs by adding materials to the clay and painting them with vivid colours. This builds on the clay skills learned in Reception and Years 2 and 3, especially the use of clay slip as a glue to add features.
Year 5 have been reading the book Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief and have studied some Ancient Greek history. As part of this study they looked at how aspects of Ancient Greek life were recorded on the Greek urns and in mosaic. The children designed Greek urns and used felt tips to create silhouettes, using their silhouetting skills learned in Year 4 during their Africa topic.
The children also made a collaborative mosaic using tiles and grout, depicting a Greek urn.
Year 6
In Year 6 the children study the Second World War through the book Letters from the Lighthouse. As part of their WW11 study they looked at the Henry Moore sketches done in the London Underground bomb shelters. The children learned about perspective and vanishing points to make their own underground shelter studies. In their sketch books the children explored different media before deciding which to use, some using charcoal, others pencil or ink pens.
The pictures also express the feeling of overcrowding and claustrophobia that were obvious in Henry Moore’s pictures.
