Welcome to our spring Arts Blog. Since Christmas there has been so much creative learning and fun at SSMJ. Here are some of the highlights:
We have a shiny new stage at SSMJ, which immediately came into its own with year 3 and 4’s fabulous production of The Button Box. The children excelled and got great feedback from their audiences (adults and children), they also had lots of fun! Kudos to all of our performers and also to our year three and four teachers who made it happen so skilfully.
Year 4 have been busy looking at the Book of Kells in art, as part of their Saxon topic. The room was almost silent as they channelled the concentration and expertise of celtic monks and created their own initial in illuminated lettering. They got very excited about the precious (and rationed) gold paint. They produced some incredibly detailed, creative and considered work. They also made their ‘Plinth People’, creating armatures and designing figures based on characters from their production.
There has been lots of 3D work in KS2 art, with Year 5’s studying Hannah Gold’s The Lost Bear and working across the curriculum, with some wonderful polar bear creative writing and fabulous 3D mod roc polar bears. Year 6 made ‘Brave Colour’ light box installations, exploring the work of artists who use colour and light to create 3D installations. A great Access Art activity that stretches the children’s imaginations and 3D skills. The results as always were individual and amazing.
Redwood class have been to the Story Museum and listened to stories told by the museum’s story leader. As a Spell Bound school we have a great partnership with this magical resource and the link is a huge boost for our children’s oral and creative story telling.
Year 1’s reading cafe was a big hit and a great idea – snacks and drinks were served, whilst our children read out their pirate tales and drew illustrations. The children also got to have a pirate, dress-up day at the end of term.
Year 3 welcomed parents in to their assembly and had a chance to show their Egyptian masks and gave a song and dance performance.
World book day can’t go by without a mention. So many creative costumes and a fun day of reading and activities. This was also a chance to collaborate with our local independent bookshop, who encouraged our children to visit the shop in their costumes after the day of fun.
We are now preparing for our SSMJ One Picture arts days. These two big art and creative writing days will see us all coming together to make art and write stories, inspired by one picture. Our KS2 Young Arts Council team went on a research trip with myself and Ms Blackwell to see the picture for themselves in the Western Art gallery at the Ashmolean Museum. They made some drawings and will feedback to the rest of the school. We also filmed the route up the many stair cases, to our chosen picture and hope some of our children will have a chance to seek out our picture on future visits to the museum. We are very excited about our drawing, painting, printing, 3D making, writing days and will report back in our next blog.
There has been so much creativity happening, it’s impossible to detail it all but I should also mention: Easter service singing, Irock performance, year 6 ukele lessons and Bollywood dance club’s trip to the New Theatre stage as part of the Oxfordshire Schools Dance Festival. There was watercolour painting and cardboard house building (and then The Great Fire of London burning) in year 1. We have our weekly singing assembly and there was a special goodbye song for Mrs Ahmed at the end of term.
It’s always nice to be appreciated by our school community too:
“Just to say it’s so fun that the kids have had so many awesome chances to do performances in the last couple of weeks: iRock, Easter service, Button Box – all really good opportunities to perform.”
Ali Moreton
and the Arts Team