Rocks Alive!

Year 5 and I have been exploring Rocks by using our bodies to create shapes and movements.

Similar to last year, the class has worked in groups to create some ‘live installation’ performance pieces that will be shown on the museum open day.

The groups have explored Rock Types by creating movements to represent each type: layering bodies on top of each other to create Sedimentary rock; making a shape and then twisting and distorting it to create Metamorphic rock; forming a volcano shape and exploding out of it to create Igneous rock.

The groups have worked extremely hard on creating their Rock Type dances. Each group decided what order they wanted to perform the movements in and have also choreographed how they enter and exit the hall.

We have also looked at creating some movements for Giles to film and turn into a mini film. For this, we used as our inspiration parts of the Rock Cycle. We looked at Weathering (where rocks get broken into smaller pieces); Erosion (where the rocks get carried away by water, ice or wind); Deposition (where rocks get dropped down).

For this we played with making shapes on the wall bars and then dropping away from the wall to show rocks breaking up and falling away from a cliff. We also jumped off objects to show rocks in the air. And we rolled over the ground to show rocks being eroded and carried along in a river.

Everyone is looking forward to seeing themselves on film and I am very excited about being at the school on Museum Day to watch the live dance pieces.

Amanda (Choreographer)

Dinosaurs Do Many Things…

Reception class and I have been exploring the wonderful world of dinosaurs together.

We have been 4 legged dinosaurs, 2 legged dinosaurs, dinosaurs that fly, dinosaurs that walk, dinosaurs that run and dinosaurs that swim. We have been tall, short, wide, thin, sleeping, eating, happy, grumpy, quiet, noisy, strong and weak dinosaurs.

We have worked in partners with one partner sculpting the other one into a dinosaur pose. Then, using magic invisible remote controls we have made the dinosaur come to life, move around and even become extinct.

We have played a game of copying a partner’s dinosaur movements and we have pretended to be a dinosaur egg that cracks open to let out a baby dinosaur that miraculously grows up into a big, loud, ferocious dinosaur in just a few seconds.

We have had lots of fun being dinosaurs and taken photos of all our dinosaur dancing, so that the photos can be added to our poem about dinosaurs… Hopefully you will see this on display on Museum Day.

Amanda (Choreographer)

Year 5 rocks!

I have been working with year 5, researching and making some of the exhibits for the Digging Deeper Museum.
We started off in January doing some observational drawings of rocks and fossils using pen and ink. We looked at the shapes and textures of the specimens we were drawing, and drew in pencil first, adding detail in ink using nib pens and brushes.
I am going to frame these drawings so they can be put up in the museum.

We also worked on a 'fossil wall' or 'fossil bed' using clay and plaster of paris.
These pictures show how we made the fossil bed.
The first job on Thursday was to flatten out some clay to make a large square-ish slab of clay to work on.

Then we carved and modelled fossils out of the clay in relief. You can see from the photos that some of the fossils are sticking up on top of the clay and some are hollowed out of the clay.

The next stage was to build cardboard walls around the clay, in order to stop the plaster from oozing everywhere.

We then mixed up the plaster (this was quite messy!) and poured it on top of the clay. We let the clay set overnight.

On Friday afternoon we removed the clay from the plaster cast. Our fossil bed was revealed! We spent some time cleaning any odd bits of clay from the plaster.

A few weeks later we painted the plaster cast with PVA glue - this was to seal the plaster, so it wouldn't absorb too much paint when we painted it. We let the PVA dry then mixed up a yellow ochre/brown-ish colour from acrylic paints, diluted it with PVA and water, and painted it over the whole cast.

This last photo shows the finished result - I think it looks fantastic!
Miss Riddall's class was brilliant to work with - I have really enjoyed my Friday afternoons and I'm looking forward to the museum day on 7th March.

from Louise

Giraffes and dinosaurs

I have really enjoyed working with the Giraffe class to make a dinosaur. Although they are the smallest people in the school, the dinosaur they have made is pretty big - can you tell what type of dinosaur it is?

Here are some photographs showing the difference stages we went through to finish our dinosaur.

The Giraffe class have worked really hard and they are now all experts at papier maché. Well done to all of you,
from Louise

Rewind...

A short movie built from sounds and photos of inset day - for Rebecca.

The Animal Man

The animal man came to visit, look what he brought with him.

We got to touch lots of different animals.