Arts Week – South America

In class 7, our focus for Arts Week has been around the continent South America. We have looked at the different animals that you might find there and we have also identified different structures and objects you might spot there too!

The children have thoroughly enjoyed making a range of artwork out of different media. We started the week making the statue ‘Christ the Redeemer’ and green anaconda snakes out of clay, looking very carefully at the shape and structure of them. We had to make sure we put plenty of water on the joins so they didn’t fall apart when they dried. Whilst we left these aside to dry, we then started to create the Amazon River by carefully drawing the shape of the river and surroundings and then we added paint! To finish the day off, we thoroughly enjoyed a musical afternoon! First, we made our very own maracas whilst listening to South American music and then learned a samba dance. It was even more exciting that we got to use our hand-made maracas in the dance!  We also got to perform it to the rest of the KS1 children!

On Tuesday, we absolutely loved learning about parrots and toucans which are native birds of South America. We followed Miss Bamford’s step-by-step guide in drawing the birds and paid close attention to detail to the shapes and lines. We made our birds look more effective by finishing them off with oil pastels. They looked vibrant! We had another musical themed afternoon and looked at the props that were used in the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro which is considered the biggest carnival in the world! We got into the carnival spirit and made replicas of the face masks and sombrero hats that are worn during the exciting festivals!

On Wednesday, we got the table covers out and spent the morning painting a background landscape for our city skylines. We wanted to create a sunset effect so we blended the colour gradients to create this look. We left these to dry, then they would be ready to add the skylines on to on Thursday. Following that, we spent a full afternoon working on a class project. We made a collage of the Amazon Rainforest using mixed media. We did this by working in small groups, carefully completing our section of the rainforest. Once they were all complete, we attached them all back together like a jigsaw puzzle to produce the final piece. It looked fantastic!

On Thursday, we continued our Amazon River creations by making them look more effective. We did this by adding mosaic details onto the river and scrunched up crepe paper onto the trees that were surrounding the river. The finished result looked amazing! After that, we learned about the red-eyed frog. The children thought it was amazing that this type of frog is one of the best-known amphibians in South America! (They especially loved its eyes!) We drew the frog on black paper and coloured it in with oil pastels to make it livelier. We started the afternoon by finishing our city skylines. We did this by drawing around a skyline then carefully cutting it out. We then stuck it neatly onto our sunset background to create a silhouette effect. To finish the day off, we finished off our clay models by adding the correct colour paint. We had to be extremely careful with the smaller details!

On Friday, we learned that cacti are native to the deserts in South America and have adapted to the dry, hot climate by storing water in their stems (interest huh?). We carefully drew a cactus on black paper and once that was done, we coloured them in using chalk pastels. We had to be extra careful not to smudge the bits we had already completed! We finished off our day by covering our clay models with PVA glue to make them extra shiny.