Dark and light

 Some more artwork from the Autumn term. 

Our theme was 'Electric Rainbow' - colour and light.

The children made observational drawings in charcoal of sources of light

Stained glass inspired by Church windows, using tissue and a printed picture of a saint, black strips for the window frame, then laminated. We stuck these onto the classroom windows.

Colour mixing using acrylics to make rainbows, again, using good old paper plates. 

We studied Vincent Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night'. The children wrote about their feelings and descriptions onto speech bubbles for our writing wall.

 We celebrated 'Christ the King' in our class assembly. This is a centrepiece that I had made.

Bonfire night pictures.....oil pastels to cover a piece of A5 paper.

I then painted over them with a mixture of black paint and washing up liquid. A couple of layers needed.

When mounted, the children took them home to 'scratch out' a firework picture.

Hand prints for our communal wall in the cloakroom - again a nice momento.

I used printing ink with a brayer.

 Our colour mixing experiment using Skittles

We used a light box to experiment with colour.

Our 'Owl who was afraid of the dark' display with charcoal pictures.

I hung up black cloth around the area to darken the area so that the children could use their torches.

 Experimenting colour mixing with watercolours

Christmas Craft

Just some of this term's school work....

We told the Christmas story with pictures to support the childrens' writing

Angel Gabriel, I thought the hand print wings were a nice momento. Finger blob hair.

Retro Christmas candle card. I cut strips of fancy paper that I had. Then children glued them onto a rectangle piece of card, and I trimmed it when dry. 

Baby Jesus in the manger collage

Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem.

 I made this picture with 60 children over an afternoon. So the printed background was made first, then the children went off to draw their own picture which was stuck on later.

The Bethlehem background print is from a styrofoam piece that I had used previously - see below a previous Christmas card. I just drew around simple shapes to create a scene, cut it out in styrofoam and mounted it onto card. Printed with white printing ink onto black paper. The lights are finger dots of paint.

The swirly sky was made using a Gelli plate - inspired by The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh.

A Pinterest idea... good old paper plates - cheap to use.

These pine cones were found in my Dad's attic...about 300 of them. About 30 years ago he made Christmas decorations to sell at our local Church. The money that he raised was sent to Peru where they used it to build a Church. Nice to put them to good use. 

I cut out cardboard circles which were then decorated with square 'presents'. This served as a base so that the little Christmas tree would stand up. I used my Sizzix to cut out the stars.

I've never been a huge fan of glitter - in my early days as a teaching assistant, a boy managed to shake a whole pot over the carpet - it took me ages to clean up and I got a piece in my eye which irritated me for days. Never mind the environmental issue - it's a pain! So it only comes out at Christmas.

'Do not be afraid' Shepherd picture.

The background is another styrofoam print that I made, this time a chorus of angels.  The hills were a quick sweep over with a sponge and green paint, just to add a bit of background and make the children's drawings 'pop'.  Time is of the essence when working with 30 or even 60 children.

Advent promises in stars.