How to build a flower.

In Autahi, we love to use our art projects to develop new art skills, such as observational sketching and colour blending.

Our latest art piece looks deceptively simple. But it has been an epic production with many steps and much learning. We have been making it alongside our Inquiry learning about Growing and Changing as this has including a lot of work on plants and flowers.

Now that our artwork is finished and on display, we wanted to share our process with you.

Using real flowers and leaves for reference, we began by painting some sheets of paper. This was a good opportunity to practice colour mixing and blending. We tried to make a smooth gradation between two different colours, for example white and pink.

We also painted some leafy greens.

Next, we did some detailed observational sketches of flowers and plants. Using oil pastels, we used our knowledge of plants to draw stems and roots onto a black sheet of paper. We were careful to leave space to add the flowers and leaves afterwards.

Using real flowers as models again, we went on to draw large petal shapes. We chose the petal shapes we liked best and made them into stencils.

Carefully, we drew around our petal stencils onto our painted paper. Then, we cut out our petals, which was a great scissor-skills challenge.

We arranged our petals on our artworks and checked we were happy with the positioning before we stuck them down. Some of us also added some extra flower details using oil pastels.

With our petals completed and stuck onto our flowers, we turned our attention to the leaves.

We began by looking at some leaves from the school garden and sketching some different leaf shapes.

We chose our favourite leaf shape and made it into a template.

Using these, we drew leaves onto our pre-painted paper and cut them out.

Then, we spent time arranging our leaves on our pictures, choosing the best positions before sticking them in place.

We are very proud of our finished art and love the way the each flower is unique, expressing what each person knows and has noticed about flowers and plants.

 

Please come and visit us soon and enjoy the stunning garden of flowers on our walls!

Keeping the learning going over the term break

With the end of term rapidly approaching we wanted to dive into some ideas for keeping learning going over the summer. These are some tips of things that will help maintain some of the skills your child has been exploring this year. 

We will give you a physical copy that you can take home with you during the upcoming parent-teacher meetings.

Feeding our minds and our tummies, too!

 

This week, we've been building on our knowledge of shapes by experimenting with finding fractions of circles, squares and triangles. 

We have learnt that fractions are equal parts of a whole: halves are two equal parts of a whole; quarters are four equal parts of a whole.

The word equal is important. If you're sharing a pizza with friends, you have to cut it into equal pieces. Otherwise, someone might be disappointed. Imagine if you're the person who gets the smaller slice!

All this learning is hungry work. But, wait a moment! We know that baking and cooking are full of maths (counting, measuring, adding...). What if we got to practise our fractions by making and cutting up some actual pizza?

As an added bonus, making pizza dough with yeast also gives us a chance to observe something that grows and changes, which is a neat connection to our Inquiry.

Here's the whole process from start to finish.

We used fresh yeast. Some of us liked the smell of it - and some didn't! We added a little sugar to feed the yeast, and some water. And then we waited for it to bubble.

Mixing in the dough, making sure to add the right amount of water.

Time to knead.

After kneading, we let the dough prove and noticed how it became bigger and more bubbly.

Now time for Team Sauce to get to work. We made a pizza sauce with tomato, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper. We also grated the cheese.

We spread the dough out into circles, spread it with sauce and a sprinkle of cheese.

Time for the oven! The dough went even puffier in the oven and the cheese melted. Yummo!

We had a few pizzas so experimented with cutting them into different fractions.

Our quarters, sixths and eighths are delicious!