CULTIVATING CREATIVITY
Planting sunflowers
Year 3 got a head start on their STEAM project in Summer 1, when we planted 30 sunflower seedlings. We thought about what plants need to grow and used our learning to choose a safe place for them to flourish.
After 6 weeks of attention, we discovered that they had grown too big for their pots! It was important that we re-potted them, so that they had enough space to grow.
What does a sunflower represent for you?
Wildlife Trust
We had a visit from the Wildlife Trust to teach us about the wildlife in our playground and the types of plants we might use for our green wall. We even learnt what the difference between a hover fly and a wasp is!
Graphic design
We were so lucky to receive a visit from a Camden-based Graphic Designer. We picked her brain with lots of brilliant questions about her fascinating job and learnt so much!
Josa's brilliant advice helped us to make decisions about the kinds of plants that would look good on our green wall. She taught us all about how close and careful sketching is so important when presenting a product to a client.
I wonder what kind of questions you would have for a graphic designer?
Dissecting plants
It's time to get scientific! What does each part of a plant actually look like? Through close observation, we were able to dissect and identify the parts of a flower and learn about what each part is for.
seed dispersal.MOVSeed dispersal 1Seed disperal
In order to understand one of the key elements of the life cycle of a plant, we looked into the different ways seeds are dispresed. We went outside and thought about the properties of each seed and how that might give us a clue as to how these seeds are dispersed.
Seed dispersal 2Music
We composed and performed music inspired by different emotions. Here we are showing different emotions on our faces. Often nature can help us get back to being happy and calm in the green zone.
Emotion music.movDance
We choreographed dances inspired by nature for the London Youth Games.
In 3D, we chose the song “Down to Earth”, as we felt it reflected the message of our STEAM. We focused on learning the words before we started to choreograph in small groups, to ensure our dancing was musical. You will probably identify some interpretative improvised dance at the beginning that emulates a germinating seed!
In 3T, we thought about how nature makes us feel and the children created a dance about how cheerful it makes us! We chose a song about digging deeper which is also very upbeat. Sometimes we want to jump up and celebrate our wonderful world, as well as nature making us calm. The children all burst in and out like flowers and seeds growing!
The Tiny Seed
We read the wonderful book The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. Then we put ourselves in the shoes of the seed and wrote our own stories of the lifecycle of a seed, but this time from the perspective of the seed themselves. The we published our work on watercolour art that we created inspired by the illustrations in the book!
Recipes - fractions
We wrote recipes for delicious seed crackers that we tried making ourselves! We decided to publish the recipes so they could stand up on the counter when you're cooking!
We did a lot of fractions work this term and we used our fractions knowledge to work out how many spoons we needed of each ingredient!
seed crackers.MOV
DT
How do plants stay on a green wall? We asked ourselves this very question and tried out some prototype designs.
IMG_1678.MOVThe flap design on these prototypes didn't hold up the flowers very well, so we decided to re-design the structures. This time, most of us opted for structures that held plants up a bit like shelves. We thought about the shape of the designs as well and how we could create a design in the aesthetic of the wall.
IMG_1683.MOVIMG_1689.MOV
Meditations
We wrote guided meditations that you can use to calm down and rest in nature.
Meditations 3T.movFabric flowers
Just when we thought we couldn't get craftier... we were so lucky to have a visit from local embroiderer, Lucy, who has recently set up her own business. What a great opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship in Camden!
Lucy worked with us in group to teach us how to attach together pieces of felt in order to create beautiful fabric flowers. They look just beautiful on our display!
Simona
We were lucky enough to be visited by a fantastic illustrator who works on expressing emotions through art. The children created artworks around how they were feeling at the time after practising how to use lines and colours to express different things.
