Inter Disciplinary Learning
Room 14 enjoyed listening to and watching the story ‘Mouse Paint’ by Ellen Walsh. We then enjoyed a variety of activities exploring colour mixing.
The pupils in Room 2 have been working extremely hard on their book study of ‘The Colour Monster’. The poor Colour Monster is all mixed up, his colours are all over the place and therefore his feelings are too.
We explored each colour and feeling by initially doing Sensology work exploring objects of each colour and listening to pieces of music, mainly classical, which helped create the appropriate atmosphere. After this we did a BIG art session for each colour and feeling which was so much fun!
When we explored yellow and happiness, we used our favourite art techniques. We rolled balls down ramps, crinkled cellophane, used the salad spinners, shook pasta in a metal tin, painted with beads – each child used their favourite technique before happily exploring those of their friends. There were SO many smiles in class!
Blue brought the feeling of sadness and we did watery art. We were all amazed to listen to, feel and look at what happened when we blew straws into bubbly water! We also sprayed paint from bottles and made incredible marble prints.
During our angry, red session we made lots and lots of noise! We stamped our feet in the paint as hard as we could and banged on drums and cymbals…paint went flying everywhere!
As we discovered about black and fear, we made ‘scary’ creatures scurry over our bodies before dipping their feet in black paint and make them scurry over our paper! Some pupils were mesmerised while we dropped the heavy, clanking chain onto the floor after dipping it in paint and there was some amazing requesting for ‘more’.
There was a lovely, gentle atmosphere in class when we explored green and calm. We made balloons fall from a height and beautiful patterns from gymnastics ribbons made beautiful marks on our paper. A definite highlight was waving the big green cloth to create a textured collage; we started off by waving it gently although many pupils communicated that they liked it going fast fast fast!
We are very proud of our pupils for their fantastic engagement and new learning from this project. We will check back in with the last little bit of our Colour Monster book study work before the end of term!
Rooms 6 & 7 have been having lots of fun exploring Our Colourful World through both our play and work. We have enjoyed participating in a range of colour matching and sorting activities and enjoyed using the Interactive Board for some tasks. We have also managed to find lots of different colours through our play. We’ve even been using our Pixon boards to choose and chat about colours!
Room 9 pupils have really enjoyed our topic this term – Our Colourful World. We have made Elmer the Elephants using recycled materials, we are currently re-using plastic bottles and turning them into colourful vases and recently we did self-portraits. Our portrait gallery is on display outside our classroom for other pupils and adults to enjoy.
We learned all about birds during Birdwatch Week. We started by making pictures of birds with colourful feathers and we listened to a sensory story called ‘Learning to Fly’ – we had such fun with the bird puppet it made us laugh and we touched a little egg in a nest. Most of us loved exploring the texture of birdseed and then we made mixed it with lard to make birdcakes. We had a bus outing to Hazlehead Woods where we collected twigs to make nest pictures, listened to the birds while exploring the woods and set out the birdcakes for the birds.
Room 13 are being organised once again. This time they are planning for another special day at the end of March where we share our love and appreciation for our families and those close to us. We have used a range of techniques to create our own special artwork.
We have been doing a selection of colourful science experiments this month. Yesterday we dissolved the sugared coating from Skittles in warm water to make patterns. It worked instantly. We had great fun watching the colour of the water change, and observing the different patterns.
On Tuesday we were delighted to see our first ever Duke of Edinburgh Award winners receive their Certificates at the Aberdeen City Award Ceremony. These young adults have now all left school however it was a pleasure to catch up with them and see how the confidence gained by completing their Bronze Award has supported them as they have moved on from school life.
We have another group of 6 S5 and S6 pupils working hard to complete their Bronze Award this year, culminating in their Excursion section at Whiston Lodge. They are all making excellent progress with their Skills and Volunteering Sections and enjoying all the practice sessions that will support them to complete their Excursion.
‘Our world of colour’ is our whole school interdisciplinary learning context this term and we are loving exploring a different colour every week. We choose one of three activities and are asked to try and sign the colour of the week. We have enjoyed creating with primary colours and secondary colours, tomorrow we are going to experiment with the tertiary colour brown, through cave painting, transient sand art and rubbings. Karen has attached her lesson ideas if you would like to use these at home.
The afternoon children at Orchard Brae @ Ashgrove have been participating in “Burns Day” and “Chinese New Year” celebrations. They had the opportunity to make tartan pictures and thistles as well as Chinese writing. They were able to try the traditional Burns supper of “Haggis, Neeps and Tatties” followed by shortbread which they had decorated. Some of the children were not impressed with this Scottish dish. The Chinese food proved more popular and they particularly enjoyed trying to pick up the noodles and rice with the chopsticks.
