Autumn Term 1 Reception and Year 5

Year Five

Year 5 have been developing our understanding of line and tone in our sketchbooks.

We explored various graphite pencils, each with a different hardness and tone. We used these pencils to practise four types of shading: hatching, cross-hatching, stippling and stumping.

We used our line drawing and shading skills to practise drawing from obervation, inside the classroom and outside.

We visited Bolton Abbey, and we sketched the Abbey using all the skills we have been working on.

Next half term, we will be drawing Bolton Abbey in colour using watercolour pencils, inspired by the work of artist Richard O’Neil.

We have also been working on our sewing skills. We have learned how to do running stitch, back stitch and cross stitch.

We will be using these skills over the next few weeks to make and embellish a drawstring bag, to take with us on our UK adventure!

Check back with Year 5 to see our remembrance clay poppies, which we will be taking to Heaton War Memorial in November.

Reception

Whilst settling into Reception, this half term we have been concentrating on ‘Autumn’. To begin the topic we gave the children scaffolds to follow. The tree was given as a starting point and the children used scrunched up foil in the autumn paint (colours chosen by them – red, orange, yellow, brown) to add the leaves.

We also went on a leaf hunt around the school grounds and showed the children how to use chalk pastels to make a ‘leaf rubbing’.

We read ‘The Gruffalo’ as our class story and asked the children to think about the features he had. They were then asked to choose the correct colours and pencil draw the Gruffalo. In this example you can see the purple prickles, orange eyes and green poisonous wart at the end of his nose.

For this activity we provided the class with a variety of collage materials and asked them to create the Gruffalo!

As part of a handwriting assessment we read the story ‘The Dot’. Alongside the children’s self-portraits they worked in provision to create their own ‘dot ‘ pictures. Many used finger prints or cotton buds in paint to create their dots.

This ‘dot’ was a representation of what happened in the story, many small dots turned into one big dot.