The End of the School Year

A year of wonderful artwork is nearly at its end. Students have learned new skills and used new materials. They’ve completed amazing artworks and persevered when lessons have been challenging, especially this term in weaving. My on-going philosophy in teaching, especially with the younger grades, is the idea of “beautiful oops”, i.e. there are no mistakes in art, only new opportunities to make something beautiful. Older students have considered the “embrace the shake” approach, based on an inspiring TED talk of the same name. This is all about looking at any limitation we might have as a chance to problem-solve and think creatively in art, and more importantly, generally, in life.

Year 2 Fingerprint Tree Christmas Card

Students used their fingers as a tool to paint prints to make a colourful tree. They cut this out and displayed it on a A4 background sheet, to complete their Christmas card.

Years 5 & 6 Wire & Bead Ornament

Students made textured stoneware clay beads last term and then painted them. They used these along with floral wire, gold beads and bells to create original ornaments.

Year 3 Christmas Village

Year 4 Oil Pastel Paper Weaving Mat

Years 5 & 6 Airdry Clay Pots and Figures

Year 6 Colour Theory Layered Tape Painting

Students alternated paint layers with masking tape to achieve an amazing effect. The colours they had to work with for the layers were as follows: first layer - primary colours, second - one secondary colour with a white tint, third - complementary colours, and fourth - black and white.

Year 6 Tree of Life Mural

Year 4 - 6 Stoneware Clay Beads

Students modeled textured beads and then painted the beads after they had been fired in the kiln. We will be using the beads to make Christmas ornaments.

Embrace the Shake TED Talk

In art school, Phil Hansen developed an unruly tremor in his hand that kept him from creating the pointillist drawings he loved. Hansen was devastated, floating without a sense of purpose…until a neurologist made a simple suggestion: embrace the shake. Year 4-6 students watched this video and we discussed it. A Compass Learning Task was set for the Year 4 students to answer two questions about the talk. You can find Phil's inspiring talk HERE.

Year 3 Quilling

During the Renaissance, French and Italian nuns and monks used quilling to decorate book covers and religious items. The paper most commonly used was strips of paper trimmed from the gilded edges of books. These gilded paper strips were then rolled to create the quilled shapes. Students tried their hand at this paper art with fantastic results!

Year 1 Butterfly Scratch Film

First students listened to Butterflies are Patient, an interesting book all about the life of a butterflies and different kinds of butterflies. Next they drew a plan for their butterfly picture to use when scratching their film paper. It's rainbow coloured paper with a black film on top. When you scratch this film off the top, the coloured paper underneath is revealed. Students used a wooden stylus to scratch their film.

Year 3 Fabric Collage

Year 3 - 6 Ojos de Dios

Students loved creating the traditional God's Eyes or, in Spanish, Ojos de Dios, and first learned its history. This craft originated with the Huichol indigenous people in western Mexico. The God's Eye is started the first year a baby is born and each year a new colour of yarn is added. It hangs over the child's bed and symbolises God's protective eye watching over the child.

Year Prep & 1 Rainbow Collage

Students listened to a song called Roy G. Biv by Greg Percy. Each letter of this name is the first letter of a colour of the rainbow. They drew their rainbow colours with oil pastels, and then cut their paper into strips with interesting lines. Lastly they arranged the strips in a puzzle-like collage.

Year Prep & Prep/1C Watercolour Fish

First we read part of a book on fish and discussed how fish breath. Next using oil pastel students learned via a guided lesson how to draw a simple fish. Lastly students used watercolour paint to bring their fish to life.