ART & DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES

Pre-Primary

Jessica Wood is an American artist who is well known for her colourful abstract flower paintings. After learning about line and shape, we used our imagination to create amazing artworks inspired by Jessica’s flowers. We used a variety of painting and drawing techniques to add detail and interest to our work. We used line and shape to create beautiful texture in our work.

Year 1 - Autumn Leaves

During autumn, tree leaves around our school turned into beautiful red, orange and yellow colours. We collected and observed the leaves closely. After learning about warm and cool colours, we drew the leaves and painted them in beautiful warm colours with a cool background. We used a variety of acrylic painting skills to create amazing artworks inspired by Autumn.

Year 2 - Bob the Artist

After reading Bob the Artist book by Marion Deuchars, we loved Bob’s resilience and his creative way of solving problems. We combined Bob’s art idea with a painting inspired by a famous artist Piet Mondrian. Mondrian used the primary colours, black and white in all his paintings. We demonstrated our understanding of colour, line and shape in our painting.

Year 3 - Grotti Lotti Birds

Casey Manson (Grotti Lotti) is an Australian artist who creates quirky, happy and colourful art. After studying her work and art style, we created our Grotti Lotti inspired birds. Our focus element of art was texture. We used a variety of painting techniques and mediums to create amazing texture on our very colourful birds.

Year 4 - Awesome Orca

The orca, also called killer whale, is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. In Visual arts, we created a painting of orcas in their natural habitat. In this painting we demonstrated our understanding of space as an element of art. We used a variation in colour and size in the foreground, middle ground and background to create the illusion of depth in our work.

Year 5 - Dog Sculptures

In Visual Arts we have been working on sculpture making. To design a sculpture some of us used our pet dogs for inspiration while others were inspired by their favourite dog breed. We learnt about the features of a great sculpture design and how to manipulate materials to create a sculpture. Before building our final sculptures, we followed our designs to make a prototype of our sculpture and practised sculpture building skills and techniques. Once we gained confidence, we then made our final sculptures, using old newspapers and Modroc plaster bandages. After completing our sculptures, we will paint them in realistic colours using acrylic paints. Our focus elements of art are form, colour and texture.

Year 6 - Aussie Wildflowers

Australia has the most beautiful wild and native flowers. In Visual Arts, we have been creating artworks to celebrate the beauty of Australia’s flora. We learnt about space as an element of art, and how to depict perspective in a painting, using colour variation, size and texture. We practised a variety of acrylic painting skills and techniques. After detailed planning of our artwork, we used a variety of acrylic painting techniques to create a large canvas painting of our favourite Aussie wildflower.

All artwork will be displayed in our Annual Art Exhibition in Week 8 this term.

ITALIAN

Over the last few weeks, the Year 2 classes have been working diligently on the topic of Animale. The students have made animal masks and written descriptive sentences for their animals of choice. They’ve also been using formulated questions and answers to conduct surveys (sondaggio) in Italian. It’s been really encouraging to see such a high level of diligence and cooperation among the students when speaking with their classmates in Italian. Ottimo lavoro studenti!

The Year 6 students have proven to be wonderful speakers of the Italian language by undertaking more detailed conversations. They’ve been very keen rehearsing with their partners to improve their conversational Italian. Some of the Year 6 students have become very confident in sharing their recorded Seesaw conversations with the whole class and this has been a great help to the other students. Bravi studenti!

Meanwhile, the PrePrimary classes have been listening to many different Italian songs, dancing, and playing games, as a fun and effective way to learn Italian each week. It’s been lovely to have the PrePrimary students come up to me regularly in the playground and begin reciting Italian words and phrases they’ve previously learnt in class. Fantastico studenti!

MUSIC

This year, our music program has been filled with enthusiastic and happy learners! The seniors have had a fantastic time exploring their favourite music genres, including Rock, R&B, Jazz and EDM. They're even honed their skills in creating music with build-ups, drops and outros. One exciting activity involved taking control of the Music class TV, simulating the experience of being a read DJ!

Diving into diverse rhythms, we've had a banger playing new beats from the West African culture on the Djembe drums. The main focus has been playing perfectly in sync with each other which will help us explore improvisations and solos. We're also participating the Performing Arts Festival this year, starting us off on a high note as our Year 4 student Joel Drinkall, recently wowed the judges with a mesmerizing Piano solo performance and earned him a well-deserved Outstanding Performance Award! Bravo, Joel, for such excellent work!

The excitement doesn't stop there, as our Year 4 students are gearing up to perform at the festival in a few weeks. They'll be showcasing two songs from "Matilda the Music" and "The Lion King". If you see any Year 4 students in the playground, they might sing you a phrase from the song if you're lucky!

Connie's Column