We hope that you have all had a happy and restful break.
This half term our topic is 'Grand Designs', where we will be looking closely at buildings, construction and architecture around our local area and beyond.
We have started our new topic by looking at our school logo and discussing why we have a picture of the Whitefield Bridge. Over the coming weeks we will be finding out more about the Whitefield Bridge's construction and history and how we use it today to take us from home to school.
Our core text for Spring 1 is 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'.
We have been looking closely at the painting Langlois Bridge at Arles by artist Vincent Van Gogh and making observations of the techniques used by Van Gogh to create his art work.
We described what we could see in the painting using nouns and adjectives and asked a range of thoughtful questions.
We then used viewfinders to look closely at the artwork and explored the texture shown in the sky, water and bridge. We practised recreating the texture using oil pastels, chalk pastels and textured paints by building up the colours slowly to create the texture.
This week we have enjoyed spending time our new outdoor Workwork Area. Through woodwork the children will develop their creative thinking and imaginative skills whilst also extending their learning in maths, scientific investigation, physical co-ordination, and language and vocabulary development.
Initially, the children will be taught how to use the tools safely and given opportunity to try techniques in appropriate ways.
We have continued to explore texture in Art this week. We will be using the skills we've developed to create a textured piece of artwork of the Whitefield Bridge, inspired by Vincent Van Gogh.
In English we are focusing on retelling our core text The Three Billy Goats Gruff.
As part of our topic Grand Design we had a Lego community builders workshop. We built our own buildings and then worked collaboratively to create a town. We had to think carefully about how we placed the bricks to make sure our buildings were strong and secure and didn't fall down.