Year R

Term 1

In Oak Class we have been very busy doing lots of art this term. We have been learning about ourselves so we spent lots of time experimenting with the paints and seeing if we could mix our skin tones.

We then looked carefully at the shape of our face and had a go at painting them. The following lesson we looked in the mirrors at our faces and we used oil pastels to carefully draw the shapes we could see for our eyes, noses and mouths. We also looked at our hair and drew that on,
thinking carefully about the colours.

We also had to get ourselves really organised and made some hand print Christmas cards of Santa. We had to draw Santa’s eyes, nose and mouth on once they were dry.

Finally we were reading the book Pumpkin Soup. We sat ourselves in a huge circle and all decorated a pumpkin using collage materials. We had the choice of card, paper or tissue paper. We also had to choose lots of different shapes to make eyes, noses and mouths for our pumpkins.

Term 2

In term 2 Oak Class watched some videos of fireworks and talked about the shapes and colours that we could see. We used oil pastels to draw some fireworks onto huge sheets of black paper. They then used toilet rolls to print some fireworks too.  After that we wrote the initial letters in our names and covered them in different materials such as dried pasta, lentils and split peas. On Children in Need Day we pretended we were having a birthday party and we designed and made birthday badges which we all wore. We also learnt how to print using fruit and vegetables and finally made some Christmas wreaths!

Term 3

This term we have been doing art based on fairy tales. We started off by making some puppets based on the story of The Three Little Pigs. We had to look really carefully at the pictures and copy them and then we stuck lolly pop sticks on the back so that we could hold them and act out the story.

We also had a competition to work in groups to create one of the Three Little Pig’s houses. The brick house was made out of cardboard boxes and we used sponges to print on the bricks. We added a roof and a chimney and drew the pigs so that they could look out of the window and made a giant wolf to stand on the roof. The straw house was made out of cardboard and we stuck the straw onto the outside and added the three little pigs. But the trickiest challenge of all was the stick house! That group decided to make a wigwam structure out of sticks and then made the pigs to go inside their house. Mrs Sweeney then came down to judge the houses and choose her favourite one.

On NSPCC Numbers Day we had to create the numbers from 1-10 on giant pieces of card. We used lots of different materials to create collages. Some of us even added on stickers at the end. We cut the numbers out so that we could put them in our role play school.

Finally we were given the job of being an illustrator. We chose our favourite fairy tale and had to create a front cover for it. We looked at a selection of front covers from fairy tale books to help us with our work.

Term 4

Following on from our topic on fairy tales, Oak Class started looking at spring growth, focusing on growth within fairy tales. They read the book The Enormous Turnip and made a gigantic collage turnip in art. We then asked children to lie on the floor and we drew around them to create the characters in the story. We then painted them and they got displayed on the wall.

During STEM week we created some boats. The children designed their own boats, thinking about the materials and colours that they wanted to use. They then had to refer to their designs to create their boats. We were really impressed with the quality of their work.

We also created a giant bean stalk from Jack and the Beanstalk. We created leaves using different shades of green paper and card and helped the beanstalk to ‘grow’ up the pillar in our role play area. We also made the giant’s castle to go at the top of the beanstalk.

Finally we created some Easter cards. We printed using our fingers in yellow paint and then added on beaks, wings and legs to create some little chicks.

Term 5

This term we celebrated Earth Day by designing and making animals. We had to choose our own junk modelling materials and then create our animals by looking at our designs. We had to think carefully about what materials to use to make our animals look realistic. Our animals are now displayed along the corridor for all our visitors to see.

We also created some spider webs by sponging paints onto a template and also by rolling marbles through paint. We looked at some photos of spiders and made our own spiders to go onto our webs. Some of us even added some wool to our spiders to make them hairy.

Finally we created some collage butterflies. We used different paper to make the butterflies and talked about how to make them symmetrical. We hung the butterflies up in our classroom.

Term 6

This term we have been very busy creating beautiful art. We started off the term by creating some work based on the story The Snail and the Whale. We all decorated a CD using different materials to make a shell and then rolled out a piece of clay like a sausage to make the snail’s body. We stuck the CD into the clay and then added pipe cleaners to make the eyes.

After that we worked as a team to make a giant whale from the story. Mrs Clarkson drew it out and groups of children helped her to paint it. Our giant whale is going on display in the corridor with some of our other work.

During one of our lessons we had Art Builders day. Jo from Animate Arts gave us a challenge in assembly. Our challenge was to create a class tree based around the inside of a carpet roll which became part of a global orchard out of the front of the school. We were also challenged to make individual trees out of paper bags. Our school’s theme was fairy tales and we created a magical world based on Alice in Wonderland. Visitors were able to see our large trees out the front of the school and were then sprinkled with magic stars before entering the hall and becoming giants in amongst our paper bag forest.