Specialist News

 that In Grad. INTERSCHOOL SPORTS - ROUND 1          🏉⚽️🏐

         🎨  VISUAL ART 

What a SPECTACULAR start to Art. With some jigging and reorganising the new look Art Room now has much more space for inventive minds to spread out and enjoy. 

Term 2 is blooming with boundless inspiration and creative fervour. From exploring diverse mediums to unravelling the mysteries of artistic expression, each moment is becoming a journey of discovery. A painted sunrise teaming with colour to a seemingly pleasing fish transforming into a Piranha. The unique sound of clay squishing and Aliens on the run. 

Join us and marvel at the"Chef-d'œuvre"

It’s French for MASTERPIECE

PREP

Prep grade students have embarked on a visual journey through space, using art to introduce them to the concept of planets. They have been encouraged to express their thoughts and feelings about the cosmos through various artistic mediums. Super Rockets, Aliens and Space People.

GRADE 1

Paper Weaving

Paper weaving is an open-ended art activity! This project enhances pattern recognition, building on fine motor skills, and developing problem-solving skills. Paper weaving is a fun and creative craft involving cutting strips of paper and weaving them together to form patterns. It’s a versatile and colourful technique for making decorative designs.

GRADE 2 SUNRISE

The students’ artistic talents awaken in a symphony of warm – cool colours dancing upon the horizon. Brushstrokes of yellows, red and orange blend in harmoniously with blues, greens and purples, as the sun's gentle embraces a new day.

Grade 2 Students engage in hands-on activities to develop their understanding of clay's properties, techniques for shaping, and firing processes. Through sequential learning experiences, they have learnt to coil, pinch, and mold clay to create both functional and sculptural pieces.

GRADE 3 / 4 

Theo Jansen: Dutch artist known for his kinetic sculptures. 

Kinetic art is art that moves and depends on motion from someone or something to make it move, in order to reach its full effect. 

While closed, students drew their fish in pencil adding detailed complex patterns in the fish’s body and/or fins. They then opened the paper entirely so you could see the top and bottom parts of the fish with the paper in the middle blank. They then connected their lines from the fish’s mouth from the top drawing to the bottom drawing, stretching it out and drawing the mouth wide open.

GRADE 5 / 6

Grade 5/6 Students engage in hands-on activities to develop their understanding of clay's properties, techniques for shaping, and firing processes. Through sequential learning experiences, they learn to coil, pinch, and mold clay to create both functional and sculptural pieces.

S.T.E.M.

So far in Term 2, there has been a lot of work in the STEM room using the 'T' of STEM - Technology and the 'E' - Engineering. This is a build up moving away from our chemical experiments from Term 1 but using technlogy to research before we create and build.

In Prep, we have been looking at the seasons and traditional seasonal weather (which we have not had this week in Autumn!). We pretended it was summer and attempted to build sandcastles. A lot of our created work has been sent home (the Preps love taking their work home).

After that, we moved into traditional winter and spoke about snow and ice. We attempted to grow some crystal snowflakes and then we followed instructions to make our own paper snowflakes (to make at home, there are lots of 'simple' snowflake videos on you tube). (Next time I'll post an update on whether or not our crystals grew. I'm saving the big reveal for Monday of Education week when I have the 2 prep classes.

In Grade 1 and 2, we have been also looking at the effects of weather during the seasons. We have looked at example of extreme weather and how it can affect us and our planet. The Grade 1's made season spinners on the traditional seasons in STEM and I was pleased to see this was built on in the classroom when they made seasonal spinners of the Kulin Nation. Grade 1s also started looking at weather patterns and began filming a first draft of some weather reports using the Ipads.

The Grade 2's planned a more polished weather report and we plan to finish filming next week using the green screen and an app on the Ipad to connect films together. Last week the Grade 2's started their work on the Solar system by using google, google slides and the microphone to find out facts about the moon.

In Grade 3-4 we have been moving our knowledge from severe weather to natural diasters (and of course human caused disasters). They complete some initial research using the chromebook and google classroom and have just started creating a 3D/Diorama model that they can then apply their 'disaster'too.  I am worried about the poor lego minifigs who are about to be flooded.

Finally for the Grade 5-6', we once again failed to launch our hot air balloons. We continued with some knowledge about UV rays and the danger to eyes as well as skin. We looked briefly at natural and human-made disasters and students chose one to research before they start building their working model in Week 5.  The last 2 weeks, the students have been experiment with a new type of coding - SCRATCH and many of them got to learn how to make sprites moves, record their own sounds and progam moveable games. Feel free to ask your students to log into their scratch accounts and show you what they have learnt.

Stephen Lytton, STEM Specialist