Our Thursday group had lots of fun creating their hero masks! They loved experimenting with feathers and glitter to create some interesting effects. One of the children was originally planning to make a bunny mask before deciding it might be more interesting to try out adding pearl paint and glitter to the feathers to make a party mask. The other planned their mask around the idea of a glitter fairy.
Like the Wednesday group, to create them we had some mask templates, card, pencils and scissors.
Next week we will be making a cityscape picture using paper and colourful tape.

This week our Wednesday group has had lots of fun creating some fantastic masks!
We had some mask templates, card, pencils and scissors to create the masks with. Once this was done we had glitter glue pearly paint and our collage box to choose from and decorate our masks with!
One of the children decided to make an Incredibles mask and then plan some super hero tools to go with it. Another decided to create a mask based on a cat game they like to play. One of the children wanted to make masks based on their super hero created last week. Everyone else wanted to experiment with the different materials we had available to make a fairy mask.
Next week we will be making some cartoony superhero cityscapes!

This week the Friday group continued experimenting with illustrations for their books, they also experimented with ways of creating their text. One of the children also experimented with sewing paper together with the idea of binding their book themselves this way. We had some feathers to try writing with, letter stamps and pens. The children also ended up experimenting with wax resist as a way to add texture or text in.

Next week we will start creating the books, starting with making the pages (cutting to size and creating backgrounds).

For our first Thursday 4-9 year old session we drew some budgie and cockatiel feathers like the Wednesday group did before half term (click HERE), but instead of monochrome patterns we experimented with colour mixing. We had red, light blue, dark blue, yellow and white paint long with different sized paint brushes to experiment with!
The feathers are going to look amazing on the display board with the monochrome feathers, Fairy Grotto and spin paintings!
The children spent a lot of care and attention on selecting what colours and patterns to use on their feathers. They also experimented with trying to show the fluffy texture of the feathers.

One of the children decided to try painting a bird during the last ten minutes, they enjoyed mixing paint to create orange, two different shades of brown and green.

Next week we will be having lots of fun creating some fabulous colourful masks!

This week we created some Super Hero paintings! Some of us based our super heroes on members of our family and some of us created imaginary super heroes.
To start with everyone drew their superhero with a pencil. Next each child had their own palette with white, red, blue and yellow paint. The children enjoyed experimenting with creating peach, brown, purple, pink, green and orange for their paintings. A few of the children tried making black by mixing red, yellow and blue together, they noticed the paint looked more black when wet than when it had dried on the paper. The children also noticed that if there is more red and yellow it made brown but with equal amounts of red, blue and yellow it made black.

Next week we are going to make some awesome super hero masks!

Today we created some lovely placemats and garlands for the Queen’s Jubilee, the children also decided to create some other decorations using different colours.

The first decoration we made was some Jubilee placemats, we drew patterns with wax crayons on a piece of A4 paper and then painted over the top using water colour paints. The children enjoyed exploring wax resist painting, especially using the white wax as it was like uncovering a secret. Next they cut out a circle of tin foil and painted with acrylic paints their idea for a plate design.
Once the paint was dry we then laminated them, this way the children had a reusable and washable placemat ready for their Jubilee meal!

Next we made some garlands, some of the children used the British flag colours but most decided they wanted to try using different colours or themes. We ended up with a variety of ways of creating garlands. Some garlands were made out of paper plates, some by using a paper doily as a stencil and several with a ring cut out of cardboard. The cardboard ring garlands ended up being a mix of painted and collage.

Everyone wanted to try out paint spinning which two of the children used to make their fantastic paper plate garlands. They were inspired by the plate spinning art our toddler group had created the previous week which were on our display.

This week our Friday group has been experimenting with ideas for the backgrounds. Using paint and different tools they experimented with what find of textures they could create for the backgrounds of the pages of their books (behind the text and illustrations). Sponges and string painting made some really interesting textures that one of the student’s thought would work well for the book cover. They tried experimenting with black paper and how it compared to white paper as the base colour.

Using different paper produced some interesting effects with the paintings, the students felt that the black paper ended up looking messy whilst the red paper looked quite striking with streaks of yellow.

There was also some experimentation with brush tip pens and calligraphy which we will continue after half term. We will explore the different ways we can create the words of the book, calligraphy, typography, mixed media and printing. Next week Strutts Community Centre will be closed for the Queen’s Jubilee on Friday so our 10-13 year old group will be joining the Wednesday group.