Creativity In The Classroom

Third Class

Our Lady of Lourdes N.S.

Goldenbridge

Teacher Sarah O’Donnell

S.N.A. Kelly

Spring

Our Theme in third class was Spring. It was already in the air in the classroom as the children had grown tulips and daffodils. They started with observing flowers and we look at the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe.

Constructing Flowers with paper.

We began by exploring lots of ways to cut, bend, and fold paper.

Then the children created their own flowers using the techniques they had explored.

Nests.

We looked at old nests to see what they are made of. There was dries grass, moss, feathers, clay, hair, twigs and leaves. The children collected their own nesting materials and built nests.

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Birds

The children wanted to make birds for their nest. They were very excited the following week when I brought in lots of fabric and needles, pins and threads.I showed them how to make a pattern for their birds. There was great enthusiasm. Only three children had ever seen anyone sew before.

We used old pillows for the stuffing and added feathers, buttons , pipe cleaners and beads to complete the birds.

Parents and Children learn from each other.

Parents were invited to join the children in a session to make baby birds to complete the Spring nests.

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Fifth and Sixth class, Bluebell,

Teacher Mr. O’Donovan.

This class had 5 weeks of Creativity in the Classroom and we decided to prepare for their confirmation. We began by exploring our names. The children tried writing their names in different ways and found out from their parents why they got their christian names.We had very interesting stories behind each name.

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The class and teacher wanted something that they could continue to work on and could go into the church for their confirmation ceremony.I decided that we could use individual cardboard boxes that would look good as individual art works and also make a large sculpture when all the boxes are put together. Every child will have their own piece of art to keep to remind them of their Confirmation.

We began with self portraits.

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When we put the boxes together they looked like a dove cote. As the dove is a symbol for the Holy Spirit each child made a dove for their box in clay.

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The children cut out windows in the boxes and used coloured cellophane to change the light in the boxes.

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The teacher and children continue to add ideas to the boxes. These will be displayed in the church on the day of their confirmation.

Afterwards each child will bring their box home to treasure forever.

Our Lady of the Wayside

Third and Fourth Class, Bluebell

Teacher Ms.Dalton

During the past few weeks the children in Ms.Dalton’s 3rd and 4th class have been working with rocks. They began by observing the various patterns and colours and identifying each rock.

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They studied fossils.

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They took plaster casts of plants they found in the school garden to understand how fossils were formed .

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They invented their own plant fossils by pressing objects into clay and taking casts of them.

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The parents/grandparents/guardians  were invited in to make a Jurassic  park type garden using the fossils, paint, sticks, stones and oil pastels.

They worked together to produce the gardens. Finally adding photo portraits of themselves in their wonderful creations.

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Ms. Lavery’s Senior Infant class, Our Lady of Lourdes, Goldenbridge.

The children started their first weeks of Senior Infants in September 2011 exploring the world of stories.

They began listening to lots of stories read to them by Ms. Lavery.

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They made their own characters in puppets. They had aliens, princesses, pigs, horses and all kinds of creatures and people.

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They worked in pairs making stories with their puppets.

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Together they drew these stories.

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The class went with 6th class to an exhibition- ‘Sculpture in Context’ in the Botanical Gardens.

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The drew from the sculptures and told each other stories about some of them.

Back in school Senior Infants drew their own stories inspired by the artworks. Here are some with the theme “The Nest’.

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They made their own books.

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Bedtime Stories.

On the final session parents were invited in to create stories and books with the children. The theme was bedtime stories.

We looked at how the illustrator Lauren Childs uses collage in her books. The books were made using collage so the parents and children could collaborate on the same book.

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Our Lady of Lourdes N.S. Goldenbridge.

Senior Infants

Block 2, 10 weeks, 2010/11

Teacher; Ms. Devlin.

S.N.A. Ros.

Senior Infants began with clay for the first four sessions, building towers, slab building, and animals. Their favourite animals to make were elephants.

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We moved on to another material; fabric. They began by sorting by colour, and texture. I brought in a photo  of orphaned baby bats from the floods in Australia, as I knew they were interested in animals from their clay work. They got busy with old socks, pajamas and fabric and made their own baby bats. Bats became the focus of the class in other subjects over several weeks as they were all so interested.

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Masks and Faces.

Before and after a visit to the African artist Romauld Hazoume at the Irish Museum of Modern Art we did a lot of work on faces and masks, using clay, paint, chalk pastels, markers, sticks stones and leaves. Romauld Hazoume makes masks using old oil containers from his country.

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For our  final session parents came in for an exhibition of the work and a clay workshop with their children.

Our Lady of the Wayside, Bluebell.

Teacher Ms. Garland

Class Second

S.N.A. Trish

Suitcases

We began with a suitcase for each child.This prop inspired lots of ideas about travel and journeys.Where could you go? What would you pack? How would you travel?

What clothes to pack… to go to Spain, Paris, the Antarctic?

You need passports to travel.Passports show your identity. We put in our date of birth, height, nationality, fingerprints, portrait photographs, our eyes, our family,some people put in their houses and dogs.

Passport photographs.

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Passports.

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Holiday Snaps.

A Journey.

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We put on our rain capes packed our passports and set off on the bus for The Irish Museum of Modern Art. We showed our passports at the desk and were given stickers to put in our passports.

We drew the building on postcards and posted them home at the Kilmainham post office.

Then we visited the exhibition of an African artist Romuald Hazoume. He makes sculptures and masks out of old oil drums. Before our visit we looked at the Republic of Benin where the artist is from. Two children from our class are from Nigeria the country beside Benin. They thought the photographs looked very like Nigeria.

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Masks from recycled cardboard.

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Exhibition and Workshop for Parents.

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School – Our lady of the Wayside, 3rd and 4th Class

Teacher – Anna Mc Dernott

S.N.A. Aisling

Before visiting Sculpture in Context at the Botanic Gardens the children drew and printed trees and leaves.

This is what happens to the tree in Autumn.

Botanic Gardens

We were able to visit lots of different climates in the Botanic Gardens. The leaves in the Rain Forest are much bigger than home. There are lots of different cacti in the desert.

The sculptures were made out of lots of materials. Many of the sculptures reminded us of stories.

Blue Moon

Sculpting