As we head into our final school term, we will be diving into an exciting new Unit of Inquiry called "How We Express Ourselves," while continuing to explore the overarching theme of "Who We Are" that has shaped our year-long inquiry. Our aim is to inspire our budding artists and communicators to create a diverse range of art that reflects their unique perspectives. As they hone their creative thinking, communication, and social collaboration skills, they are also building up their abilities as effective communicators and open-minded learners.
In Circle Time, we have been looking at different types of art and thinking about which direction we feel drawn to creatively. Split up into 4 general categories, are Visual Arts, Musical Instruments, Physical Arts and Construction Art (architecture). After we had had an introduction to each learning path, we reflected and then voted on which aspect of art we were most curious about. Everyone will still have a chance to explore a wide variety of arts across Arrival Play and Community Play, but we will be taking the most voted for element of art and taking a deep dive into it during our upcoming Circle Times.
Visual Arts
For visual arts, we are including painting, cutting and sticking, drawing and photography. For our Circle Time activity, we focused on four different pieces of art. Starting with Starry Night, we shared our observations and responses as a group. We found we had a wide variety of reactions, volunteering that it made us feel excited, happy, calm, scared. Some of us thought the yellow in the sky looked like stars, that the sky looked like the ocean. We thought the black shape in the front could be a big bush or tree. It could be a witches castle or a bad guy hideout. We thought about sitting inside the picture, looking at the view from the mountain top. We saw the lights were on in the houses and thought it could be night time. We then watched a short animation of A Starry Night, observing the wind moving the clouds across the sky, the stars twinkling. and reflected on how the music that combined with it made us feel relaxed or sad. We repeated this for the remaining three pieces of art, before voting on which one we liked the most. We discussed how we didn't all feel the same way about the different pieces of art and that we could see and feel different things depending on our unique perspectives.
Musical Instruments
We started our Circle Time asking the question, what is a musical instrument? Once someone had given the first example of one, hands shot up and we had a variety of instruments offered up from guitar to piano to flute to ukulele. We talked about any instruments we had at home, any that we were taking lessons to play and any instruments our parents play. We thought about how we use musical instruments to make sounds and build songs, that we use different body parts to play them, and that they can make a whole host of noises. Focusing on trumpet, piano, drums and violins, we first mimed how to play each one, before watching a short clip of a musician playing them. In our Circle Time conclusion we sang the song 'I am the music man', acting out each instrument as they were added to the song.
Trumpet
Flight of the Bumblebee
Piano
Let It Go
Drum Kit
Baby Shark
Violin
Dance Monkey
Physical Art
On World Book Day, we started looking into theatrical performances and dance. Instead of reading a story by relying solely on the words and pictures, we used our bodies and props to act it out. The story, 'Animal Boogie', involved a monkey, bear, elephant, leopard and snake. We discovered very quickly that this was a musical story where the words had been written as a song. As each animal was introduced, a new volunteer came up to dance, using movements they had observed from the various animals. Big heavy dance steps for the elephant, a slithering, sliding action from the snake, quick, sharp jabs from the leopard, a lumbering dance from the bear, and a swinging style for the monkey. We reflected on how we could use our bodies to tell different stories, and that dancers often do this through their performances.
Construction Art
For our final category, we had a look at some amazing architecture. We talked about how both classes love working in the construction area, and how well we all work together to build increasingly big and beautiful structures. Introducing architecture, we talked about drawing and designing buildings before using Google Images to look up some interesting constructions from across the globe. We were fascinated as we continued to enlarge images to take a closer look, sharing our observations of what made them special or unusual or just downright strange. Next, we gathered some ideas for where we could take this suggested project. We gained inspiration from looking at cardboard box creations, intricate LEGO buildings and clay based works of art.
The Final Vote
AM Class Results
Today, we reviewed and reflected on the four categories. After a long think, we took turns placing a circular magnet in the box that corresponded to the category we were most curious about. After we had all had a turn, we tallyed up the results, counting as a team, before reviewing which category had the largest voter number. Interestingly, both AM and PM classes revealed a majority vote for visual arts!
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