Chalk, pastel and charcoal drawings

Written by Susan on 15 July 2009

We do a regular art session once a week here. This was sparked off by Ruth wanting to doing some more arty stuff and knowing that we are more inclined to do it if we have a friend join us we do have a friend to join us.

I pretty randomly choose what we are going to do based on what we have enjoyed doing before, a subject we might be interested in or what ever I happen to have found on the internet. The children often start off with what I have found and then take it in many different directions. We all join in and our differentiation is by outcome and also by length of time you are able to do it for. Jonathan usually produces loads and loads and has finished in half an hour. Ruth usually takes her time, but often experiments and ends up trying out a new technique somewhere having found flaws in what she started. Rebekah varies enormously depending on what we are doing, she wasn’t very taken with this and decided to take photographs of the fruit kiwi and the pictures rather than carry on drawing them. I usually do something quickly and go and make tea! The idea of me leading in art is laughable. Earlier in the day I do a OU geometry group – I don’t panic or have any worries about what we might cover in that group or how to get them to progress or whether I can make any sense at all. But art, that makes me break out in a cold sweat.

So tomorrow I have my geometry and art day. The only really structured day we have. I know where I can find the OU materials, I know if they need more practice or something a little easier I can get something off the CIMT site and I will be able to explain what we are doing.

But art…what are we going to do. where will I find inspiration, I don’t even know the best places to look. I will spend hours trawling websites tonight or more likely the early hours of tomorrow morning, trying to find a good idea.

Anyway despite my lack of confidence in my artitic abilities the children seem to be doing rather well at it.

Here are Ruth’s drawings of a kiwi and a watermelon. They were supposed to be looking at the fruit and drawing exactly what they saw. Well Ruth’s kiwi might be pretty good on that score but the watermelon seeds are definitely arranged where she thinks they should be and not where they actually were.

Jonathan made a really good
go of his melon and kiwi. We had a discussion about how to spell kiwi and he decided that kiwi ought to spelled kiwie so he would write it like that. This led us to have a discussion about the development of spelling in English and how Shakespeare spelled the same words differently throughout his writing. Opps there we go again coming over all cross curricula!