Art Envy

It's been a stunningly glorious day weather wise, but everything else has been horrible! It was 16 degrees and you could actually feel the sun on your back. We had the doors open, the air smelled gorgeous...you get the idea.

We had the annual "Excellence and Enjoyment" morning at school. I hate it. I loathe it, every year. I think it's because we've latched on to some initiative, and even adopted the DfE name for it, without really thinking about what such a stupid name might mean for the children. But anyway, I digress.

It wasn't talked about much so I almost forgot about it, hence why I wasn't as prepared as I could have been. Never one to commit to a plan, I was scouring the internet last night searching for inspiration ;-)

I decided to do a SuperArtist project. I've yet to try one with my class but wanted to for a while. What with the endless, literacy, maths and phonics there's not a whole lot of time to do a lot else. I was inspired a while back by the Lulu and Leo fund- have a read of the story and I'm sure you'll see why.

They loved the freedom that the morning provided. We talked about Joy, and I showed them what we were going to try. It was a learning curve because I found it hard to make the star! Stars But I think that was important too, to see that even the adults needed to make mistakes etc in order to succeed in the end. 

I put some music on (Pink Martini), and they beavered away. Working in twos, folding, cutting, going back to the smart board to look at the instructions to see if it was working etc. 

We had a nice morning, but we didn't quite get it finished. The end result didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped, but it was child-led, rather than adult dictated. However, when some of my colleagues shared their class art this evening on Facebook, I started to worry that mine was really rubbish and once again, bottom of the pile me had got it wrong. Except I know that their's are all where adults told the children what they were making and how it was "supposed" to look etc, whilst ours was their project with no pre-decided end-product. 

In other news, A cancelled on me as she wasn't well.It was ok as I got to go home earlier, and really needed to decompress today. I planned to go to the gym, but ended up in the peace and tranquility that is Waitrose twenty-minutes before it closed on a Wednesday night... ;-) 

* The gardeners came for the first time in months and mowed the lawn. It looks really lovely.