Year Two
Just as in play, making art becomes social when children share responsibility during art experiences.
“Stellarphant”, illustrated and written by James Foley.
Students put together a multi-media space artwork utilising soft oil pastels and coloured pencils to blend and create tone, after reading the shortlisted Book Week book, “Stellarphant”.
The Princess and the Pea
The story tells of a prince who wants to marry a princess but is having difficulty finding a suitable wife. One stormy night, a young woman drenched with rain seeks shelter in the prince's castle. She claims to be a princess, but no one believes her because of the way she looks. The prince's mother decides to test their unexpected guest by placing a pea in the bed she is offered for the night, covered by twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.
In the morning, the princess tells her hosts that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed. With the proof of her bruised back, the princess passes the test and the prince rejoices happily, for only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding.
Students described and discussed similarities and differences between artworks they are making, which include two and three dimensional elements, as a response to Bob Graham’s illustrations in his book, ‘Ellie’s Dragon’. They discussed how they and other artists organise the elements and processes in artworks and which materials they would like to use in their diorama to create a dragon’s home and a model dragon. The students collaborated and brainstormed ideas around planning and making artworks that illustrated an imaginative home for a dragon and how to sculpt dragon features.
Year 2 students read “In The Deep Blue Sea”, by Angie Lionetto-Civa and Christina Booth, looked at my illustrations relating to sea creatures and discussed their own experiences with the sea. They drew using both observation and imagination, then used inks on water to pull prints to represent and depict the ocean.
