Blog by Cally Smith

The Cabinet of Curiosities is open!

Sometimes known as ‘wonder rooms’, cabinets of curiosities contain small collections of extraordinary and interesting objects. Our ‘wonder room’ is curated by our librarian, Mrs Haynes.

The Cabinet of Curiosities has been created to engage pupils…

Our DT projects consist of four steps – explore, design, make and evaluate.

Year 6 are designing chairs for an Action-man sized person. Pupils have been given a brief and have chosen their target customer and the style of chair they will make.

Week one

To begin the project, the pupils…

Within their art lessons this term, Year R have been weaving with paper, wool and fabric. They have each created small individual woven pieces and have also had the opportunity to weave together on a larger scale with fabric and ribbon through wooden pallets.

This fiddly weaving task has…

This week, Year 2 were privileged to have a stained glass window expert, Buffer Tucker, visit them in class and run a special workshop. Buffy is now retired but used to work in the stained glass windows department at Canterbury Cathedral. As well as a career restoring historical windows, Buffy has…

In term 1, I teamed up with Mr Ablett and Mr Chamberlain (Year 3) to run an Art and English project. The aim was for the children to use their artwork to inspire their creative writing at the end of term.

With their class teachers, pupils read the book ‘The Tunnel’ by Anthony Brown; we…

Throughout term 1, Year 6 practised their observational skills by drawing objects and photographs of cultural objects from around the world. As well as studying them carefully, pupils also considered the cultural significance of such artefacts and discussed how they were acquired by museums for…

At the end of term 1, Year R children all had the opportunity to practise their observational skills and draw from fruit and vegetables. As a class, we discussed how and where fruit and vegetables are grown and what the seeds are for. We also looked carefully at their shape, form, colours and…

Mark-making inspired by ‘Billy and the Beast’. 

This term, Year one have been reading the book ‘Billy and the Beast’, by author and illustrator Nadia Shireen. Within art, we looked at Nadia Shireen’s illustrations and as a class discussed how she used her marks and lines to describe…

Art workshop with Pilgrims Way

Mrs Tomsett and I were very pleased to be invited to Pilgrims Way to run an Art workshop this week. We took a small group of talented Year 5 Bridge pupils, working towards an Arts Award, to collaborate with equally talented pupils from Pilgrims Way Primary…

Over the last two weeks, Year R pupils have been given the opportunity to draw a self-portrait. This task was designed to help the children express themselves and build their own identity. Observing themselves in the mirror, pupils decided where to place their facial features on their drawing and…

Over the last two weeks, Year 1 have been creating autumn leaves from their marking-making paintings. Pupils neatly drew around leaf templates with HB pencil and then carefully cut out the shape - practising cutting skills. They attached a piece of wire to the back of their leaf with sticky tape,…

In Art, pupils in Year one have been exploring mark-making but not with traditional tools! As a class, we looked at marks and lines made with unusual household objects and discussed what they reminded us of – the texture of crocodile skin, grass, fur, bricks etc.

Pupils were encouraged to mix…