Nursery - R.E - Diwali Celebrations
Today, the children were introduced to a new cultural and religious celebration: Diwali, the Festival of Lights. We began by exploring the concept of celebrating good over bad and the spreading of light in the world. To enhance their understanding of this vibrant celebration, we looked at several inspirational images. The children then engaged in two wonderful, hands-on activities: in the water tray, they explored colour and pattern, mirroring the beautiful Rangoli designs by carefully using pipettes and watered-down paint to create circles of colour. Simultaneously, they accessed the craft area to make festive Diwali lights, using a variation of glittery shapes in many bright colours to decorate their creations. This provided a rich, sensory, and visual introduction to a new religious and cultural tradition.
Reception – Art and Design: Printing
This week in Reception, we’ve been reading Winnie the Witch! The children loved exploring Winnie’s magical world and created their own potions bubbling away in cauldrons. Using finger dabbers, they carefully printed and mixed colours to bring their potions to life. It was a brilliant way to develop fine motor skills while having lots of creative fun.
Nursery - Art - Literacy - Finger Painting
During our Art and Literacy lesson, the children explored autumnal coloured paints and learned a new technique using their fingers as their painting tool. The task focused on refined movements to develop fine motor control. The children were taught how to carefully dab one finger into the paint and then press it onto their paper, successfully creating a controlled dot or fingerprint. They worked with autumnal images that had designated white spaces, requiring them to select a colour and deliberately fill in the void using this specific finger-painting technique. While it was initially tempting for some to use their whole hand and "go wild" with the paint, the children did a brilliant job practicing this new, refined skill, demonstrating excellent self-regulation and control to create beautiful, textured autumnal pictures.
Year 2 - Art - Feely Drawings
Year 2 explored a brilliant new technique this week in Art, creating fascinating 'feely drawings'! The children began by receiving a unique twig, which they had personally collected from the school grounds. The challenge? To feel the twig without looking, gathering as much detail as possible using only their sense of touch. This required excellent focus and descriptive memory! After two minutes, the twigs were hidden, and the children had five minutes to draw what they imagined the twig looked like. The session ended with the exciting reveal as they compared their tactile memory drawings to the actual object. What a fantastic way to develop observation skills and connect with nature!
Nursery - Art - Pinecone Painting
The children explored a new and exciting technique involving pinecones and paint to create abstract autumnal artwork. They began by adding blobs of autumnal colours—brown, red, and yellow—into a flat tray. Next, they placed several pinecones into the paint. Using their gross motor skills, the children were encouraged to wiggle, tip, and shake the trays, which made the pinecones roll through the paint. As the pinecones moved, they left interesting trails and marks on the paper, creating unique patterns. A fantastic extension to this activity was the discovery of a new colour! Some children noticed the red and yellow paints mixing together to create orange.
Reception - Art and Design - Creating Skeletons
This week in Reception, we’ve been busy developing our cutting skills as we created our own skeletons inspired by Funnybones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. Using scissors carefully takes lots of practice, so we’ve been focusing on holding them correctly, turning the paper as we cut, and following the lines with control. The children showed great concentration and perseverance — and had lots of fun piecing together their bony creations afterwards! It’s been lovely to see their confidence growing, both with their fine motor skills and their creative ideas. Our classroom display is now full of smiling skeletons — just like the ones in the story!
Nursery - Literacy - Writing Birthday Cards
Our literacy focus this week was on mark making and communication using the Post Office role-play area. The children engaged in the purposeful activity of creating birthday cards for our story character, Lulu. They began by choosing a card and using crayons to color and make various marks. This mark-making is a crucial pre-literacy step, as it builds the muscle control needed for future conventional writing. The lesson concluded with the children posting their finished cards into the postbox. This action helped reinforce narrative sequencing and connected their play to real-world systems, mirroring the postal delivery process just like in our story.
Year 5 Art - Making Stronger Marks
This week in Art, Year 5 focused on developing stronger mark-making techniques. Students conducted an in-depth investigation into various pencil types, specifically using 6B pencils to draw and create typography directly over newspaper articles. The primary challenge was ensuring their drawings and writing were bold enough to dominate the underlying text. Following this successful experimentation, they transferred these newly honed skills to plain paper.
Year 4 - Storytelling Through Art
Continuing with Year 4's Storytelling Through Art topic, this week we have made our own sketchbooks, ready for our stories to be drawn in them these next few weeks. Year 4 demonstrated superb listening skills and good teamwork to help each other create a sketchbook each. Year 4 cannot wait to begin putting their practised skills to the test in their handmade books next lesson!
Nursery - Science - Facial Features, Location And Arrangement
In our combined Science and Art lesson, the children participated in a focused activity designed to enhance their self-awareness and understanding of personal identity and facial features. The lesson began with the children receiving blank face outlines and a selection of individual features—eyes, noses, and mouths. The core of the activity involved using a mirror to observe their own faces closely. This encouraged careful self-examination as they noticed the placement and quantity of their features. They had to decide on the appropriate features and then attempt to translate what they saw in the mirror onto their paper. The children demonstrated excellent concentration and observation skills during this task, correctly identifying that they needed two eyes, one nose, and one mouth. They did a fantastic job of placing their chosen features to create unique and accurate representations of themselves, reinforcing the idea that everyone is unique and special.
Year 3 - Art - Drawing By Torchlight
Our Year 3 students had a wonderfully atmospheric art lesson this week as they explored the dramatic effects of light and dark by drawing with charcoal by torchlight! The children were challenged to focus on how the sharp light of the torches created deep, contrasting shadows. They used the charcoal to capture the difference between the intensely lit areas and the surrounding darkness. This activity significantly developed their observational drawing skills and taught them a lot about chiaroscuro (the use of strong contrasts between light and dark). The resulting artwork was incredibly moody and impressive, beautifully showcasing their understanding of tone and shading. Well done, Year 3!
Year 3 - R.E - Painting Things We Are Thankful For
This week, our Year 3 students prepared some thoughtful and beautiful artwork for our upcoming Harvest Service at the church. The children painted pictures of what they are truly thankful for. They explored ideas of family, friendship, food, nature, and comfort, translating their deep feelings of gratitude into vibrant colours and creative designs. The finished pieces were uplifting and reflective, beautifully illustrating the meaning of giving thanks during the harvest season. Their artwork will be shown in the church as a wonderful addition to the service. We were incredibly proud of the care and sincerity they showed in creating these heartfelt pieces.
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