1st class have been very fortunate to have been working with a local artist, Kate O’Kelly, over the last 6 weeks. They have been working on a project using clay, ceramics and porcelain. They have chosen bees as their theme for the project.
To begin with they made coil pots like beehives. They then painted these with porcelain.
Next they cut out tiles from the clay. They had to draw a design to go on the clay tile. The designs had to include a bee or bees. They practised their designs first on paper. When they were happy with their designs they used nails to etch their designs into the tiles. The tiles were then painted with porcelain too.
Finally, they cut out hexagonal shapes in clay using a jig. They learned to score the edges of the hexagons and then join the hexagons together with ‘slip’ to look like honeycomb inside a beehive. During Kate’s final week the children painted their creations.
The pupils also kept journals each week of what they worked on with Kate. These journals form a lovely record of the project. The work from the project will be on display in school soon and we hope you get the chance to come along and admire it!
1st class have also been learning all about bees and they were really lucky that one of their classmates had a bee keepers outfit and a big book all about bees to show them!
As an extra lesson Kate made birds with the children too! They turned out great!
