Artlink Project
Week 1
Last Wednesday we went to the Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling, along with another five schools from the Falkirk and Stirling areas to take part in an Artlink project about different animals. All schools were given a special animal to learn about, our animal is the elephant. We saw mercats, zebra’s and elephants with our guide Nicola who told us all about the things they liked to eat and about how they all lived in the wild. After lunch we listened to stories and sang songs with Bea and then made a poster with our artist Sue Myles. This is part of a six week project which will end with the unveiling of banners in Falkirk Town Hall on June 12th so keep looking for more updates on this project on the blog.
Week 2
Our second meeting with the Artlink team was from Bea, who told us more stories and helped us to make up or own story. Our story is about why the elephant has a long trunk. We used lots of different animal puppets to help tell the story which will be recorded and videod for all the other schools to hear and see.
Week 3
Yesterday Bea came back to school with our finished story and this time we recorded it with help from Emma who did the the technical stuff!! We used instruments and sang songs to help make our story really interesting, it was great fun we all felt like pop stars recording a C.D.
Our artist Sue Myles came into school on Thursday afternoon to help us start making the banner with the elephant scene. We all had to draw elephants with charcoal onto paper, and paint the background of our banner onto special materials which had to ironed onto the canvas banner. As you can see from the photos it was hard work but great fun and we are looking forward to this weeks visit when we will be adding more background detail.
Week 4
This week we have added trees, water holes, leaves and some elephants in various sizes. These have all been made from felt which we made ourselves by putting wool on fabric, covering it with netting and soapy water and them we rolled it in a towel to make the fibres knit together. We then rinsed out the soap and threw the felt onto the floor before Sue put the pieces in the washing machine to shrink them. The pieces are then cut out into the shapes we want for the banner and attached to it. We think you will agree that it’s looking good. We also ironed our charcoal elephant pictures onto a thin material, and when you hold it up to the window you get the shapes of the elephant’s shining through.
Weeks5 & 6
To finish off our project on the last two weeks, we put the finishing touches to our banner, and then we made jewellery from the felt that we made with Sue. The jewellery felt was made differently from the banner felt as we had to layer the colours, wet them and then we roll it into a sausage until all the water had been squeezed out, and when it was dry we cut them into little pieces and strung them onto thread to made necklaces. It was great fun and they all looked great when threaded together. Take a look.
The Launch Day
Friday 12th June 2009 was the big day for launching all the banners in Falkirk Town Hall. All six schools were there with the artists and story tellers they worked with and all the hard work was on display for all to see. The banners were all very different and very colourful. Bea and the children retold all the stories that we made about our selected animals. The Falkirk Herald took our pictures as did mums and dads. The Provest of Falkirk thought the whole exhibition was fantastic and spoke to all the children. This has been a great project and we are all sad that it has finished, but maybe next year there maybe another one for us to be involved with.
Mrs B said,
April 1, 2009 @ 11:17 am
Lovely to see you all concentrating on your drawings!!
Mrs B