Activity 1 - Early Childhood

About Me –Modelling/Collage

Make up an Information Chart using Who What When Where and Why questions.

Who is your favourite book character? What is your least favourite colour? When do you like to listen to music? Where do you go in your dreams? Why is your best friend your best friend? Who do you like to play with after school? What TV program do you like to watch? When do you put on your best shoes? Where is your favourite shop? Why do you like school? Who knows someone famous? What makes you laugh? When will you be a grown up? Where do you like to go on holidays to? Why are there so many stars in the sky?

Practical Activity

1. Use a ball of Magiclay and flatten it with your hands to create a small oval shape. Add eyes, nose, hair, lips and ears to create a face, using small balls of Magiclay pushed on to the oval shape.

2. Use the Ocaldo Blocks to paint the face shape.

3. Add black beads for eyeballs.

4. Model two small hand and feet shapes with Magiclay.

5. Glue the face on to a sheet of A4 Cover Paper.

6. Frame with the A4 Black Pre Cut Mount.

7. Use sheets of Pattern Paper to cut and glue a costume on to the Cover Paper.

8. Cut out and glue on two arms and two legs.

9. Glue the two hand and feet shapes in place.

Activity 2 - Junior School

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to explore paper construction

My Family - Paper Construction

Remembering: Make up a list of ways you can change the shape of paper using your hands as tools? Tear, fold, roll, crumple etc.

Students practise changing paper by tearing it into different shapes then twisting, folding, curling, crumpling, rolling these pieces into other shapes. Use thick and thin coloured paper.

Understanding: Begin a descriptive word chart that describes how you changed the paper. Use samples to demonstrate each method. Classify the shapes into 2D or 3D pieces.

Applying: What other tools might you need to change paper? Show how you might use scissors or pencils to change the shape of the paper.

Analysing: What method would you use to create curly hair? How might you join on a 3D nose to a flat surface? Experiment with different methods of joining paper shapes?

Evaluating: What are the consequences of not joining the shapes together securely. What are the alternative ways of fringing paper? Justify why your method works better than another method.

Creating: The students are given a paper face shape or paper circle as a starting point. The students use their 2D and 3D paper skills to add to the face, hair etc. Ask the students to give their face a name and then introduce them to the class. Put all the faces in a row. Ask the students to look at all the interesting ways the paper was changed. Can new words be added to the chart begun at the beginning of the lesson? What joins worked the best?

Activity 3 - Middle School

My Community - Textiles

Using De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to explore community.

Red Hat: Feelings, emotions, hunches & intuitions. What do you feel about this?

Green Hat: New Ideas. Creativity. Suggestions & proposals. What is possible?

Blue Hat: Thinking about thinking. Organisation of thinking. What do you do next?

Yellow Hat: Strengths. What are the good points? What are the benefits?

White Hat: Information, formal & informal. What are the facts?

Black Hat: Weaknesses. What is wrong with this?

White Hat: Make up a list of people in your school community. What do they do? What do they wear? Where do they spend most of their time?

Red Hat: How do you feel about a particular member of the school community?

Yellow Hat: What would be the benefits of the teachers wearing a uniform?

Black Hat: What would happen if the school did not employ a cleaner? How would the school be kept clean?

Green Hat: Create a hand or glove puppet to represent someone you would like to see join your school community. These can be made from calico or felt. Make up a play that introduces the new members of the school community. Justify how they would benefit the school community.

Blue Hat: What will you need to create the puppet. How will you add colour. They can be coloured with fabric paint, pastels and fabric pens. Would you need to paint the puppet before adding the hair? Hair can be glued or sewn on to create different effects. Embroidery thread can be used for hair, or Curly Hair, wool or Wool Tops.

Handy Hints: Fold a couple of pages of a newspaper to form a pad to separate the top of the hand puppet from the back when painting or gluing on decorations. Remove when all is dry.

Activity 4 - Senior School

My Environment Collage – Using the “Y” Chart

Discussion: Begin with a focus on senses other than visual so that sounds, smells and surfaces become important. Create a “Y” Chart to record what the class discovers.

Use ears like radar to become aware of the direction of the sounds. Use language to describe the qualities of the smells in the environment eg. damp earth, eucalyptus, cool/warm air. Use skin on fingertips to feel bark, gravel, twigs, leaves etc. Again add descriptive language. Use eyes to look up first then move down into the environment noting the layers of environment (and who might inhabit them) all the way to the earth.

“Y” Diagram – Smells Like - Freshly mowed grass Compost on the garden Sweet fragrance of the roses

Sounds Like - Roar of the passing traffic Crashing of the ocean waves Buzz of children talking.

Feels Like - Prickly rose thorns, Rough bark of the trees, Gritty sand in the sandpit, Velvety leaves.

Practical Activity

A Rubbing uses drawing materials such as wax crayons and pencils but it is a printing technique. It relies on surface texture; any surface can be copied by placing thin paper over it and then rubbing evenly across the still paper with a pencil or crayon, the surface texture will be copied on to the paper. It is a great activity for focusing on the tactile sense, and an interesting starting point for playing with shape, line, colour and pattern. Take a series of rubbings using Zart Rubbing Blocks to explore the texture of different surfaces found in the school environment. Make up a Rubbings Chart and use words to describe what the surface felt like. Create a textured tree with brown paper, eg. Pastelcraft Paper, by first covering the paper with a rubbing that would resemble bark. Tear, scrunch and manipulate the paper to resemble the trunk of the tree. Glue the trunk on to a sheet of black Cover Paper. Create a face for the tree using Brown Kraft Card covered with scrunched up brown paper, add branches to resemble arms and hair. Bring the tree to life with human features.