Learning About Frogs In Reception Year
We have been learning about frogs in Reception Year. The students were excited to find that frogs are amphibians and that they live on the land as well as in water. The students loved listening to a song that explains all about the frog life cycle.
See the link below:
https://youtu.be/wGIc7KitJCA
Did you know… an interesting fact about frogs is that although they breathe using their lungs, they can also take in some oxygen through their skin when swimming for longer periods. They are also able to smell better under water than on land.
The students were fascinated to see how a frog can catch its prey using its sticky tongue. We listened to the story of the Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and made a picture of a wide mouthed frog catching a bug on its tongue for art.
Bronwen Nuthall
Reception Year Teacher
Landscape Art
In Art, the Year 6’s have been working on creating their own landscape art pieces.
As a class, we looked at many different images of landscapes, including paintings and photographs. We discussed the following elements of landscape composition: background, foreground, horizon, the source of light, lines that lead the eye, natural features and manmade features.
The students then went on to creating their rough sketches of natural features from some of the paintings and photographs that we looked at. Once this was done, they looked at local landscapes in our beautiful city and sketched the different landscapes, paying close attention to detail.
The final push was picking one local landscape and creating their own variations of a local landscape, using various techniques that they learnt in Term 1 and Term 2.
The Year 6’s really impressed their teachers by creating these familiar landscapes in Cape Town, including Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, the Waterfront, Boulders Beach and many more! We are so proud of the hard work and effort they put into their art pieces and how they have taken what they have learnt and applied it.
“Art is a place for children to learn to trust their ideas, themselves, and to explore what is possible” – Maryann F. Kohl
Brittney Hakime
Year 6 Teacher
Art & Design In Year 1
Art is a lot of fun, especially in Year 1. We encourage our students to explore, create, mix colours and use their imagination when it comes to our Art and Design lessons.
They use their little fingers to manipulate various art materials in class using their fine motor skills. As they paint, colour, glue and cut their fine motor skills are developing which in turn enables them to do more things independently from feeding themselves to tying their own shoelaces.
It is so important for children to be able to express themselves and be creative in their own way.
Charlotte Cronje
Year 1 Teacher
Here are some of the fun creations and artwork our children have made:
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Taste Monsters!
My eyes can see the big bright sun.
My nose can smell hot cinnamon buns.
My ears can hear the big loud drum.
My tongue can taste good things. Yum! Yum!
My hands can feel the sand. What fun!
I like my senses, every one!
(Poet unknown)
In Science, this term, Year 3 had a lot of fun experimenting with their senses. From testing different flavours in a tasting experience to participating in a treasure hunt, making their own telephones, and ultimately culminating in creating a Taste Monster!
Here’s how they did it:
First, students were asked to select one flavour – sweet, salty, sour, bitter or spicy. They then had to bring pictures of foods illustrating their particular flavour to school. After that, they selected an A3 colour card which matched their flavour. Using their imagination, they drew a Taste Monster which represented their particular flavour. Students needed to pay special attention to their monster’s mouth as the final step was to fill the monster’s mouth with their food pictures. The results were spot on and some were quite scary…
Well done, Year 3!
Mandy Goch
Year 3 Teacher
Little Hands Learning BIG Things
Everything the Nursery and Pre-Reception students do during their day’s activities contribute to their over-all development.
Children learn creativity, confidence, problem solving, perseverance, focus, dedication, collaboration and accountability through art.
Sensory play also contributes in crucial ways to brain development. Stimulating the senses sends signals to the children’s brains that helps to strengthen neural pathways important for all types of learning.
Children learn through doing. Art is an important part of a child’s world. It’s not only a way for children to express themselves, but it also helps them develop their fine–motor skills. The process during creative activities is more important than the final product. Small–muscle control is needed in order to cut with scissors, paint with a brush and colour with crayons. Creating these works of art builds a child’s self-esteem. The finished product, displayed on the refrigerator or wall, validates a child’s sense of worth.
Another very important activity during our day is building puzzles. Puzzles develop a child’s abstract thinking ability as they must be able to see a space and visualize what belongs in that space. Fine-motor coordination is developed when fitting the pieces into place.
Fine-motor control is developed by playing with a variety of toys such as big and small Legos, wooden blocks, pegboards, beads to thread, play dough etc. These manipulative toys help develop a child’s fine motor skills, which is a precursor to being able to write.
I hope you see play differently, through the eyes of a teacher and the importance of it!
Cindy Nunan
Nursery and Pre-Reception Teacher
Year 2 Art Fun
“Art is a place for children to trust their ideas themselves, and to explore what is possible.” – Maryann F. Kohl
In the last couple of weeks, our Year 2’s have been having great fun during Art class! We explored and experimented with various mediums to make Lollipop and Animal Hand Art creations.
Being such wonderful hot summer weather lately, we found the Lollipop art to be particularly fitting. We thought about what our favourite lollipops flavours were and created them using cardboard, colouring things and some ice-cream sticks. The various flavours that the students selected look super yummy! From caramel chocolate to strawberry and even watermelon. How fun!
We also experimented with the idea of creating some cool animals using our hands as body cutouts. We had some really creative ideas like bunny rabbits, unicorns and even flamingos. The Year 2’s love getting creative and look forward to Art time every week!
Siobhan Hendry
Year 2 Teacher
(*Masks were removed for photograph purposes only.)
New Techniques In Art
The past two weeks the Year 6 students have been learning how to shade and add depth to their Art. They started off creating their own value scales. Value scales consist of values ranging from white to black with several shades of gray between. These shades of gray help to create the illusion of depth and tone. Once completing their very own value scales, the Year 6’s went on to shade 3D shapes and add depth to their pictures using cross hatching, smooth shading and stippling.
Finally, they had to find a real life object, place it in front of them and draw what they saw, including all the shadows that fell on the object. The Year 6’s really impressed us with their art skills and followed the different techniques perfectly.
We look forward to seeing what they come up with in future art pieces.
Brittney Hakime
Year 6 Teacher
“The greater your storm, the brighter your rainbow” – Unknown
We gave our Year 4 students a special assignment in art: “If you could see the year 2020 in January through magical glasses…”
The result was captivating! We expected our students to reflect on home schooling, Covid-19, masks, the earthquake, etc. To be honest we expected a very different reflection of 2020, but our students surprised us…
They drew happy pictures, showing family life, ice-cream, games and party hats. Most prominent was rainbows of hope.
Once again, they’ve taught us how resilient children are to change. Our kids are happy and hopeful despite the difficulties we faced this year.
We are incredibly proud of our 2020 Year 4 students.
Marlize Keyser
Year 4 Teacher
Ancient Egyptian Necklaces
The jewelry of ancient Egyptians held religious and symbolic significance and was treasured for its beauty and power against evil and death. It was buried with men and women because the Egyptians expected to enjoy wearing their finery in the afterlife.
The Year 3 students used their creativity to create the most beautiful Egyptian necklaces. This is how their beautiful necklaces make them feel:
“My necklace makes me feel shiny,” said Mila Arpesella.
“My necklace makes me feel like an Egyptian.” Said Jesus Da Silva.
“When I wear my necklace I feel like I can do anything, just like the Egyptians,” thinks Skye Venzke-Krecklenberg.
“My necklace makes me have joy,” explained Manjulika Moodley.
Sasha Rajah
Year 3 Teacher
Nursery Creepy Crawly Fun
The Nursery class had so much fun learning about Creepy Crawlies and loved discovering and exploring the Creepy Crawly world.
This week:
- We learned about spiders, whilst enjoying singing “Incy Wincy Spider”.
- We also discovered that caterpillars turn into butterflies! We enjoyed reading the “Very Hungry Caterpillar” at story time.
- A great class activity was finding different insects hidden in the sand during their Sensory play this week and trying to name them all.
- For Art we made Butterfly handprints! They found it so funny and exciting to have their hands painted.
- We also enjoyed going for a walk out in our special garden to find insects.
Nursery Teacher
