ZOE'S STREET DANCE SPRING 2025

After an amazing term practising indoors and out on the playground when they could, the little Street Dance crew put together an amazing dance.

 

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 31/03/2025

For the final Junior session of the term, we discussed Easter and Easter traditions - hopefully the children can tell you what the Easter bunny symbolises.  The children drew great confident bunnies - making sure to make the head thinner at the top and the ears thinner at the bottom.  Also, the eyes should go on the sides of the head.  They chose contrasting colours for their bunny and background, painted with thick paint to resemble fur, outlined with a darker colour and added patterns to the background.  Lovely bright fun pictures to end a really great term.  All the children have been fantastic, and it's been a really enjoyable class!

3D PRINTING SPRING TERM 2025

After 10 weeks of learning about 3D printing, the children finally had printed end results.

      

      

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 24/03/2025

This week the Infant children created sweet Easter bunnies! 🐰  Using a combination of different sized ovals, the children drew brilliant rabbits using white oil pastels on coloured card.    Once drawn, they used sponges to create fluffy white fur, and they added pink ears and noses.   They painted grass along the bottom of the paper and then finally added an eye and outlined it in black.  Some added the hind leg.  Great fun for the last session of the term.  

Another busy session, drawing portraits this time!   We spent some time talking about proportions, where the eyes, nose, mouth and ears go on the face!  Most children draw the eyes up in the forehead so we tried to draw them halfway down the head with the nose and mouth equally spaced out below.  The hair also goes out around the head, not just inside it.  The neck and shoulders are wider than we think. I hope they picked up a few tips and can practice at home.  They drew their portraits with oil pastel and then coloured in with paint.  They painted the face first with skin tones, leaving the eyes white.  The hair was then added and painted with brush strokes in the direction of the hair!   The school jumper or PE shirt were added and the background.  The facial features were added last. Sometimes it works to paint an upside-down 7 for the nose.  We outlined in black which helped some of the features stand out.

The Juniors had a fun lesson looking at Wayne Thiebaud's lovely cakes as it was a pupil's birthday.  He is an American printer and painter, born in 1920, who is most well known for his bright, cheerful, thickly painted still-lives of cakes, ice cream cones and lollipops, as well as cosmetics and other everyday items.  The children drew their own brilliant 3d cakes on A3 paper and then traced over the lines with bright oil pastels.      They set about icing the cake using a lolly stick and thick paint to recreate the thick frothy icing!   They added a cake stand and some added a paper tablecloth. They painted the background in simple colours and some added patterns as well.

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 17/03/2025

The Infants created robots today with metallic oil pastels and paint.  We talked about what a robot is and what we’d like our robot to do.   Cleaning bedrooms was popular!!  We also discussed the various shapes that make up a robot.  The children drew their robots on A3 yellow card using coloured metallic oil pastels. They chose which shape for the head and body and then decided what type of ears, mouth, antennae and control panels to draw!   They then painted using metallic silver and gold paint and a limited palette of red and blue.  I always encourage them to do a couple of layers of paint, to smooth out the bumps and paint with long strong brush strokes.  They finally outlined their robots with black paint which makes them jump out of the page. Great confident drawings and bright colourful painting.

The Juniors had a busy dotty session painting with earbuds.  They looked at Pointellism and Seurat.   The great 19th Century post-Impressionist painter who painted huge pictures with tiny dots – believing colours were more vibrant if they were mixed on the canvas rather than the palette – letting the eye do the mixing.  One of his pictures, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, has over 3 millions dots and took 2 years to complete!   A great example of patience.  His paintings work a lot like computer monitors work today - his dots are like the pixels on a computer screen.  

They drew their landscapes confidently - we talked about the horizon, foreground and background and I think they all plotted out fantastic compositions.  They set about mixing their colours on the paper with gusto, using ear buds!  They made sure to use different shades of colours.  It was a challenge to fill their paper with dots but they all did fantastically and the colourful results are great! 

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 10/03/2025

It was a bright, fun lesson for the Junior pupils.  They looked at Perth-based contemporary artist Anya Brock.     She is famous for her vibrant, joyful murals and paintings.   She has become iconic in the Australian art scene for her animal paintings, female portraiture, geometric design and Australian fauna. They looked at her lovely bright budgies.  The children drew the outline of the birds and added eyes, beaks and markings with pencil and then traced over with a sharpie.  They then painted the background bright yellow and then set about painting the birds with liquid watercolours.  Merging and blending the colours together.

Meanwhile the Infant pupils looked at images from the storybook The Rainbow Fish and the children then drew fantastic fish shapes using coloured oil pastels on watercolour paper.   They talked about hot and cold colours, making the fish hot and the seaweed and water cold.  They added the mouth, an eye and fins and then created great patterns for the fish scales.   They drew wavy seaweed with green oil pastels in the background and a few watery bubbles and then set about painting their pictures with liquid watercolours.  I encouraged them to keep their paintbrushes really wet!  Once the fish was painted, the children painted the background sea and seaweed.     

  

LEGO CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 10/03/2025

There were some great builds being created at Infant School Lego Club on Monday.

        

      

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 03/03/2025

Banksy and some graffiti this week.  We talked about graffiti and whether it is legal or not!  And looked at Banksy's graffiti and discussed the political meaning behind many of his works.    Most of them had seen our very own Banksy on the prison walls in Reading.  The children then made their own graffiti names.  They started by printing the really effective brick walls using sponges on black paper with black and white paint.  Whilst the brickwork dried, they drew their names in bubble writing and then set about colouring them with coloured oil pastels, choosing similar colours and then blending them together.  Once coloured in, they cut their name out and stuck it on a bright-coloured background which they cut around again.  They outlined the letters carefully in black paint.  The mounted name was then stuck on the brickwork paper and outlined again!   Black splashes of paint were the final urban finish!

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 24/02/2025

Even though collage can be rather demanding and fiddly (and sticky!), the children are so confident now at finding the colours and creating their shapes that they easily create great pictures! We looked at the fabulous collage artist Elizabeth St Hilaire and her wonderful bright, highly detailed pictures, and we looked at lots of other examples of collaged apples and pears as well.  They discussed form and shape as part of the 7 Elements of Art (line, shape, colour, value, form, texture and space) and how to use these elements to make shapes look solid and three-dimensional. If a child can draw the very basic shape of a sphere, give it shading and create volume, then they can use this and apply it to more complex shapes.  Everyone had a good go at adding darker colours to their fruit to make it 3d and also lighter areas for the light reflecting.  The children drew confident large fruit on their A3 paper and then set about creating their bright and striking pictures. They were encouraged to keep the backgrounds simple and to contrast the colour of the fruit so that the fruit would stand out.

  

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 10/02/2025

As it’s St Valentine’s on Friday, Mrs Hall thought the Art Clubs would do something hearty this week  ❤️

They had a chat about St Valentine’s Day and then set about making some fantastic patterned painted hearts. The children folded their A3 paper in half and drew one half of their heart on one side and designed patterns inside using a black oil pastel, some drew a curvy pattern around the outside as well.  Once they had done this, they folded the paper together and rubbed the pattern onto the other side of the paper so that they had symmetrical hearts when they opened the paper up. They traced over the patterns and cut their hearts out.    They then painted warm colours using a limited palette of reds, orange, yellow, pink and white.   I encouraged them to mix their own colours which they all enjoyed doing.  Once they had painted the whole heart, they cut the hearts out.

  

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 03/02/2025

Back by popular demand - Georgia O'Keeffe and her giant flowers!    The pupils' art was a messy, chalky version.  You can get a lot of chalk dust everywhere, but hairspray is great to set the pictures and stop the dust.  We looked at paintings by the legendary Georgia O'Keeffe and her beautiful, large-scale, close-up flowers.  The children drew large flowers on black card, starting with the circle in the middle or offset, and then added big petals that went off the page if they could.  They then shaded and blended the colours up and along the petals.  They talked about the colour wheel, primary and secondary colours and identified contrasting colours.  They were then encouraged to choose warm or cold colours for the flowers with a contrasting background.   They were brilliant at blending colours together and smudging with their fingers! Once the backgrounds were filled in, they outlined in a contrasting colour, which really made the flowers stand out! Mrs Hall loved the finished pictures.  Such immediate results and fantastic bright colours.

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 27/01/2025

The infant Art Club was busy drawing, printing, cutting and gluing this week.  They started with a discussion about castles and who used to live in them – knights and princesses.  They talked about how brick patterns work.

The children then set about drawing their own castles with metallic oil pastels, filling the page with the shape and drawing the rather tricky ramparts and turrets. Once completed, they used small sponges to create the brick effect on the castle.  Whilst the metallic paint dried, they drew and cut the door, windows and turrets out of their choice of coloured paper.    Mrs Hall had some templates to help draw the windows and doors if the children needed them.  The last steps were cutting out the ramparts and sticking the doors, windows and turrets.

We looked at French painter Henri Rousseau and his wonderful jungle paintings from the early 1900s.  Mrs Hall loves his bright, vibrant pictures with beautiful jungle plants and animals hiding in the foliage.  He only started painting properly at 41.    His art wasn’t taken seriously by the Paris Salon/critics at the time, it was only after he died that the brilliance of his paintings was recognised.  His style was said to be too childish.  We looked at the composition of his paintings, the foreground with large leaf and grass shapes, the middle ground with fruits and animals and the background of the sky, sun and trees.  We talked about shades of green and the abundance in Rousseau's paintings, warm and cool colours and shading with darker colours.   The children were encouraged to draw large shapes and not to press too hard.  First, they drew confidently in pencil and then traced over with a Sharpie.  They used various shades of green watercolour paint for the jungle and then chose other colours for the trees, sky and berries.  Below are some of the fantastic results – spot the animals!  Mrs Hall hopes the children enjoyed the lesson and are proud of their drawings – they were confident, large and expressive!  Ms O'Byrne loved them and has kept them to make copies.

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 20/01/2025

The Infant Club looked at some lovely paintings of pears and talked about the shape, colour as well as light and shade that help make the pears look 3D.  The children drew great confident large pear shapes with an oil pastel - a big circle and a little circle joined together helps to draw the shape.   They then mixed great colours to paint them!   They double and triple dipped their paint brushes to mix their paint on the paper, using yellow, white and a dash of orange for the yellow pear, red, orange and white for the red pear and shades of green and yellow for the green pear!    They really tried to have a dark and a light side.  They added dashes of white on the lighter side of each pear to show the light reflecting and to make the pears appear 3D!   They used pink and yellow paint for the background, using short choppy brush strokes. Mrs Hall tries to encourage them to do straight strokes rather than round in circles!   Finally, they bravely outlined with black paint and tiny brushes to make the pears ping off the page!

This week, Junior Art Club looked at Sandra Silberzweig and her wonderfully bright and bold paintings.   She is a contemporary Canadian artist who has synaesthesia - when she looks around she sees things electrified - colours are much more vibrant and bright and affect her other senses.   She has taken a difficult situation to live with and turned it into beautiful works of art.  

She uses many of the elements of art in her work; line, colour, shape, space and texture, and by looking at her work the group discussed movement and rhythm and how to achieve the feeling of movement in their pictures.

The children drew 3 large fish and 3 small fish on to A3 paper.   They then added flowing lines of seaweed in the background.   The fish were painted in cool colours and the background in warm colours to create a real contrast.   We also discussed shades and tints.   To add texture, patterns were added to the fish and, finally, all shapes were outlined in black and additional patterns could be added to the background if time.

WEKEY PIANO WEEK COMMENCING 13/01/2025

Tom had a request for ‘Green Green Grass’ by George Ezra at the Junior School.   The club all played this so brilliantly by the end of the lesson.  Keep practising this week to build the rhythm and speed of the music with attention to the finger numbers to guide you! 🙌 🎶 🎹 

ART CLUB WEEK COMMENCING 13/01/2025

It was a busy, fun session, making great, vibrant zebras!  The children drew some excellent zebras using black oil pastels, starting with a slanted U shape for the head, then adding the neck, body and legs.   We then cut thin stripes of black paper to make the stripes,  which was pretty tricky for little hands!     They glued the stripes on to the zebra and then glued their zebra on to the coloured background and added crazy manes and flicky tails!    Finally, they added green grass and the hot African sun!  We love the bright, bold results!