🌿 Rainforest Art 🌿

Lately, Kakapo have been looking at environmental sustainability and deforestation.  This led our inquiry to the rainforests of the world.  

From this, we looked at different rainforest plants.  Kakapo kids had to choose rainforest foliage to draw as their background.  We used crayon and dye. 

We learned:

• about foreground and background
• how to create depth and realism using colour (darker for objects further away and lighter for objects closer)
• layering for a 3D effect
• Adding detail and texture for realism

After our backgrounds were ready we researched birds that life in the rainforest.  Using the same learning, we created our birds adding detail with colour and texture.

We made our birds sit off the page to add realism and a three dimensional effect.

Our art is on display at the front of our class.  They are vivid and bright green against the navy walls - just how we think the rainforest would look. The photos don't do the art justice! Check out our individual blogs to read more about our integrated learning and see our art a bit closer 🌿

Emotion Wheel

This week one of our contract tasks was to think about what colours & patterns came to our mind when we thought of these emotions:

Excitement * Sadness * Happiness * Anger * Pride * Scared

We had to think of ways to represent what each of these emotions mean to us and translate that emotion into art.

The instructions were to only use colour, pattern, shapes and symbols to represent the feelings. No cartoons, faces or words.

This is what each member of our class came up with.  Have a look - can you guess which emotion is which?

Concrete Mural

One of the tasks I assigned the Kakapo Class this week was to create a concrete mural.

This could be on their driveway, a footpath, the path to the clothes line...anywhere they had a patch of concrete.  If children had no concrete they were tasked with problem solving this.  What else could they use?

We looked at examples of murals and how they were different to a regular chalk drawing we might do.

I will update this post when more concrete mural creations are shared.  Check out the individual class blogs also!

Lest We Forget

This week, Kakapo's contract had a definite ANZAC theme.  Over the past few weeks we have been learning about war time and how that affected NZ and NZers.

Children got creative making their own poppies to put in their windows ready to Stand At Dawn on Saturday with the rest of NZ.  We had poppies created out of shells, cupcake holders, origami, drawn, 3D poppies... it was amazing!

To help discuss the long term effects of the lockdown on NZ I asked children to plan a holiday anywhere in NZ.  We discussed the importance of seeing our own country and putting money back into it also.  We wrote information reports about the place we wanted to visit in NZ.

We had an ANZAC video to watch with comprehension questions.  Time lines and decimals for maths.  Plus lots of little tasks to help around the house as well.

Kakapo are ready to stand at dawn tomorrow in remembrance and acknowledgement of ANZAC day.

School Art History

Last year Mrs Cutler had a plan to beautify the face of some steps at our school. Every child in the school had to create a self portrait using only their house colours. Our whanau groups are inspired by saint - Aubert (red) Marcellin (yellow) Chanel (green) McAuley (blue).
The criteria for the portraits was to: 
Use only your house colour
Create a detailed picture of yourself 
Add your name 
Think about the background/foreground and how to manage the colour

                                 

This project was so fun, and as well as livening up the boring wooden steps this is a memory of the people who were in our school in 2019. Mrs Cutler is hoping to do this project each year - its almost like a time capsule! When you walk into our school you can see the colours and faces - we love it!

Sandra Silberzweig Inspired Portraits

Sandra Silberzweig Inspired Portraits
Kaitaia, 2019
Indian Ink & Chalk Pastel on wet strength cartridge
laminated for preservation

Bright, bold colour broken up with pattern and negative spaces.  Learning included (but not limited to) researching the artist and her inspiration through literacy, investigating shape, pattern and lines through maths, delving into colour (primary, secondary, warm, cool & complimentary) and coping with temperamental indian ink and messy, smudgy, chalky pastels

Check out the Tui Teams individual blogs to learn more!

Tui class have been busy painting ice-block sticks with vibrant colours and patterns with the aim of decorating the steps outside our classroom.   During this process we have been learning about colours and their effects, repeating patterns and measurement.  The sticks will be glued to the step horizontally and vertically (eg II=II=II)

    WALT create art to beautify our outdoor school environment

    We...
    Can choose bright colours
    Can create different and effective patterns
    Can measure the area to see how many ice-block sticks we will need