Year 3

Term 1

This term the children have been learning about the Stone Age.  In art we investigated what it would be like creating cave art. We had to get under the desks and try drawing upside down, imagining that we were drawing on the roof of a cave and we also had to draw on the bumpy surface of the playground. We discovered that this was much trickier than we expected as our drawings on the playground didn’t look like what we thought they would look like and our necks ached drawing upside down!

We then had to create our own Stone Age art. We looked at pictures of Stone Age paintings and talked about the types of colours that were used and why. We made old looking paper by screwing up paper repeatedly until it felt really flimsy and old. After that we painted it using a wash and added cracks using pastels. At the end we were given a choice of which resources we wanted to use for our animals - paint, charcoal, pastel or pencil. Some of us even had a go at adding a sense of movement to our work.

Term 2

We have been learning about the Romans this term.

In art we looked at some Roman mosaics and thought about some questions that we would like to ask the Roman artists about their artwork. We then looked at the work of Antoni Gaudi and compared his work to the mosaics back in the Roman times. After that we had to design our own mosaics/collages using chickpeas, green lentils, red lentils, pearl barley and different types of pasta. We created them in CD cases.

Once we'd finished making them, we photographed each one and each person was given a copy of all of the photos so we could play around with different compositions. Some of us liked spreading the colours out and some of us preferred putting all the colours together in groups.

At the end we evaluated our work and some of us made improvements if there were little gaps between the pieces which needed filling in.

Term 3

This term we have been learning all about volcanoes. We looked at Autumn Pearson's volcano art and discussed the materials that she used in her work. We were then challenged to produce our own work based on this. At the start of the project we were taught lots of different techniques that we could use in our work and we experimented with different materials that we hadn't used before. We learnt how to build up work using papier mache and used modelling paste for the first time. We also looked at the different effects that we could create using paint with brushes, sponges and flicking paint (sorry parents and guardians!).  

Once we'd tried out all these things we had to design our volcanoes and consider how we would create them. Once we had done that the first thing we had to do was to build up our volcano on the page to make them look 3D. We then painted them and finally had to add the finishing touches which included dyed rice, raffia, tissue paper, flicking paints, pipe cleaners and glitter!