Petals Class Art Gallery

Today, it was like being inside an art gallery in our classroom. The one whole wall was covered in paper and we had a large selection of paints to paint with. There was an overhead projector with shapes on it, that were projected onto the wall. We could paint freely, paint the shapes that were projected onto the wall or we could draw the shapes. Many of us spent time at the art wall during the morning, enjoying the experience of painting on a large piece of paper with our friends. We had a large selection of colours to use today viz. pink, purple, red, light blue, dark blue, light green, green, dark green, yellow, black, peach and orange. We will keep the paper up for as long as we can and make an enormous art work using as many materials as we want to. Our teachers will let us choose what we want to do each morning, on the mural. Tomorrow will bring a surprise as we will choose what we want to use, when we arrive in the morning. You can see from the photos that it was a really, great idea that we loved.

You can see from the photo that it really looks like we are in an art gallery. When you come to school you are welcome to come inside and even paint with us if you want to! When we used the overhead projector in the beginning, some shapes made shadows on the paper and some of us traced the shapes. We drew the outline of the shapes, trying to follow the outside lines but we found out that there was a problem. When we stood in a certain position, the shape was hidden, so we had to move our bodies so that we could still see the shapes. We also were surprised because when we put the shapes on the overhead projector, we couldn’t always see them; and then we also were not sure where to move them on the projector.

We needed to look at the wall rather than the mirror part of the projector, to see where the shapes were positioned. It may sound confusing to you, when you are reading this; you can imagine how confusing for us it was in reality. We said to our Shelley: “Where is the circle?” And she replied: “I’m not sure, can you see it?” And we still couldn’t see it!

While some of our friends were painting, we were making “kabuto” with Hisami and we also did puzzles with Liezel. We have an insatiable appetite for doing puzzles and never seem to get tired of doing the same ones over and over, or doing new ones. Shelley loves puzzles too and she says that over the years, she has read that puzzles are a great precursor to learning to read and write. Each letter is a combination of shapes; and each puzzle is a combination of puzzle pieces which are the equivalent of the shapes that make up the letters of the alphabet.

Our morning was different because we sat on the pink carpet which is in a different place. Shelley asked us if we knew what was different in our classroom. Some of us said that the pink carpet used to be in front of the library and now it is near the tadpoles. Our teachers wanted to make space for our huge painting wall so they moved some of the furniture around yesterday afternoon. We don’t mind having things moved around in our classroom as it gives us a new perspective on things. So, we sat down together on the pink carpet in its new place and we continued our conversation. Did anyone notice any changes in the tadpoles today? No! They looked the same and we don’t know when they are going to change. Someone pointed to the charts on the wall and we saw that there is a timeline for when they will change and eventually turn into frogs.

When we were painting, we noticed that sometimes the paint dripped down the paper, especially if the paint was watery. Owen saw the blue paint from his brush dripping down like a river and he watched it carefully, to see when it would stop.

One of the things that we learn in Petals Class is about things that are socially acceptable and one of the things that our teachers feel they would like to help us change is, picking our noses. We do this a lot and they asked us what we can do to try to change this. We said that we could all use tissues, which was a good suggestion, however Shelley asked us if it would still prevent us from putting our fingers in our noses. Oh dear! Maybe no! We were not sure if it would encourage us to not use our fingers, so we found another option. When we see one of our friends putting their fingers in their noses, we will say to them: “Please can you go and wash your hands.” We will try this from tomorrow and see how it goes. It may be a nuisance for us to go and wash our hands every five minutes so it could be a good preventative!

We have been spending a lot of time looking at our Life Books which we love. Sometimes we look at them more than we read other books in our library and we like to tell our teachers and friends about the people in our books.

 Thanks for a fabulous day.

Love, all the artists in Petals Class.