Warning! Reading Can Seriously Damage Your Ignorance!

This playful play on words was the title of our first installation, celebrating art, nature and the importance of books. Parodying an instantly recognizable government health warning, the aim of the title was to light-heartedly bring books to mind, and remind us how important for our minds they really are.

Over the weeks leading up to World Book Day, celebrated on the 23^rd of April, the day that the world lost Cervantes, our creation gradually came to life!

First, mystical trees grew up the walls and their branches began to rise and stretch towards each other, forming arches with their boughs, but the leaves that sprouted were not what a normal tree would produce, but the leaves of books, and books were the fruit they bore.

As time moved on our scene evolved, autumn leaves began to rest upon the ground, and beneath every leaf, little surprises hidden from the world: mushrooms and toadstools, insects and worms, all thriving under a golden carpet of slow decay!

Once the festive Christmas season had passed spring came alive when the spirits of nature began to take form. Upon a landscape of rolling hills with wild deer grazing among the trees, in the foreground we can see Pan, the classic god of nature, accompanied by one of his dryads. The rather large image was, and still is being, created by tiny torn up pieces of old magazines, patiently placed with hundreds of sticky fingers!

Carnival

In the true spirit of carnival we created a masquerade!

The younger children decorated masks which only cover their eyes and yet can change their appearance so much! They decorated them with glass and plastic beads, feathers, dry leaves and even lentils and pasta shapes, freshly raided from their kitchens!

The 4^th graders made masks that were quite psychedelic, using various methods which they learnt throughout the year such as mosaic and quilling which brought their masks to life!

The 3^rd years learnt how to make truly 3D masks using papier mache, with just flour, newspaper and water; and a lot of paint, decorations and imagination, of course!

Mother's and Father's Day

For our projects for these special days we learnt how plain flat paper and simple mechanics could produce startling three dimensional effects and produce a memorable “pop-up” card.

In the Father's day cards the children made their own portrait spring out from the card when opened, and for the Mother's a beautifully decorated heart rose up revealing poetic dedication. The heart and the front of the card were left to the student's own imagination as to how they wanted to decorate them; all the cards very colourful, and many children had fun experimenting with some of the new textural techniques that they learn during the course, such as quilling, mosaic and collage.