Thursday 26 May 2016

Australia Art Ideas

This month, we were learning a lot about Australia. Our Art lessons were also based on the theme.

1. Great Barrier Reef

We explored some of the wild life living in the great Barrier Reef. In particular, we focused on the colours and the shapes of all the different plants and animals.
The children used sponges to create the sea background. Then they used a separate sheet to draw and colour some animals such as clown fish and turtles. When the paint had dried, they added some crepe paper to represent the plants. 

2. Ayers Rock (Uluru)

You can use any materials to do this lesson but we used water pastels (I think they are pretty much the same as oil pastels). They work in a similar way to paint for mixing, so when we layered blue on yellow and rubbed it created green.
We really tried to experiment with blending. The children also added a border to each of their masterpieces.

3. Australia Postcards

Linked with English writing, we wrote and designed postcards from Australia. They children looked at examples of postcards from Australia to begin and then used their own ideas, based on all they had learned on Australia.




4. Aboriginal Stones

I showed the children examples of aboriginal art and we discussed the shapes and colours that they used. The shapes are almost a lesson in themselves as they represent humans, plants and animals to tell a story.  
The children used the technique of pointillism (using thin paintbrushes and earbuds) on small stones. We didn't limit the colours to the usual colours of Aboriginal Art though, they had free reign!






Saturday 21 May 2016

End of Year Activities...keeping them busy!!

It's almost that time of year again when most of the curriculum is covered and the feeling of holidays is in the air! It can be a long last month though to keep the children occupied and on task.
I have put together a few activities that might be useful for those last few weeks of the year.

1. Maths Murder Mystery

This is a nice group activity that also recaps on many maths strands from the year. the children figure out the Maths clues to eliminate suspects of the crime. If they follow the steps correctly they should be able to identify the killer! You can download them from Primary Resources by clicking here.

2. Display Ideas

It is always nice to ask the children what they really enjoyed during the year and what stood out for them. Here are a few ways to record their year in your class.

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This is a freebie from my Teachers Pay Teachers store that you can download here. There is also another sheet with it entitled 'My star moments this year'.
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3. Writing Activities (Irish)

I have used this with the senior classes to summarise their highlights from the school year. It is a useful way to recap on tenses and sentence structure. It can be used with younger classes too by using the differentiated worksheet.

Click here to download the resource.


4. Writing Activities (English)


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Last year, we used these task cards in the last few weeks of school. I pulled out a name and they chose a number and were assigned that task card. We did short writing sessions (10-15 mins) and they read each others work after wards. They really enjoyed reading each others memories. Click on the picture above to download them.

Here is another free set to download (click on picture to download):
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Please feel free to comment or link other ideas below :)