Roman Art and Architecture - Art & Design Autumn 1 2017

Year 4 began by researching general Roman architecture and then studying the 3 different types of Roman columns (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian) in more detail. The children drew lots of detailed, notated sketches and painted their own designed columns using tints (adding white) and tones (adding black). The children used this as a starting point to then design their own clay pots. Everyone chose to make either a coil pot or a thumb pot, and then carved and moulded details. We then created a class slideshow (see below) of our finished designs, complete with speech bubbles for our comments! Our pots are all unique and are beautifully decorated with carved designs!

Pop-up books  Design & Technology  Autumn 2 2017

For this topic, Year 4 began by researching different paper and card mechanisms used in pop-up books. We then made a variety of mechanisms, which included opening flaps, rotating and sliding pictures, and box-folds, which were rather tricky! After practising these mechanisms, Year 4 then designed their own story layouts and chose suitable pop-ups for each page. Finally, the finished book pages were assembled and stapled together. The children invited Year 3 to come and have a look at their books and then they evaluated each others' books.  Everyone was clearly delighted with their accomplishments! Well done Year 4!

Shelter from the Flood! - Design and Technology -Spring 2018 

This topic is cross-curricular with the Geography topic of Bangladesh and the criteria was to build a suitable shelter for use in Bangladesh; a country with annual monsoons and flooding.

Year 4 investigated a variety of shelters, and then compared architecture and buildings in the capital city of Dhaka to village structures. We discussed how the climate of monsoons and cyclones, with resultant frequent flooding, affected the need for renewable resources.

The children's task was to build a waterproof shelter, with stilts, using suitable materials. Working in small groups, Year 4 were able to create a wide variety of super shelters, which were all waterproof when tested, and even had furniture!

I am so proud of Year 4's maturity when sawing wood and using a hot glue gun, their great teamwork skills, and of course, their brilliant designs!  We tested our shelter models against the original set criteria, which included testing the stability of the model, and its waterproof qualities. I'm pleased to announce that everyone's models were a complete success, and we didn't spill too much water in the process either!

Summer 1 and 2 terms:  Living Landscapes

During the Summer term, Year 4's art topic is "Living Landscapes". We have investigated the mixed-media paintings of a local artist, Alistair Kennedy and then have used his work as inspiration for our own designs. The children have created mixed-media landscape pictures, initially based on Alistair's paintings, and then texture has been built up in layers, just like a collage, using newspaper, tissue paper and corrugated card. Year 4 have mixed primary colours and black and white to create a wide variety of secondary and tertiary colours to paint their landscape pictures. Brush pens and oil pastels have been added for final details, and, as you can see in the photos below, the results are excellent!

We have also drawn the local landscape outside the school "Plein air" (in the fresh air), in response to researching the methods used by the Impressionist artists Turner and Monet. Year 4's final pictures were inspired by these 2 artists and the mixed-media techniques of Alistair Kennedy.