WW2 propaganda for rationing
Today we have learnt why Britain rationed during WW2 and why it was so important. Firstly, we guessed how much food people were allowed. We have created rationing posters to convince others!


We are delighted to have achieved the Gold ArtsMark.
Here is some of the feedback from the ArtsMark assessors:
‘It is positive to read how, over the course of your Artsmark journey, you have successfully forged partnerships with approximately fifteen other providers, companies and artists who have either visited school or provided external workshops in art, drama, poetry, and music.’
‘ You have also worked hard to ensure that you represent the rich diversity of the community, seeking out opportunities such as inviting Yemeni poet and artist Amina Atiq to work with 60 children in year 4 to celebrate journeys from different countries.’
‘Pupils have had a range of authentic arts and cultural experiences, including animation workshops, gallery trips, author meet and greets and visits from artists to enhance their cultural opportunities’
‘Pupils created an art gallery at whole school events for families, had artwork on show in the Royal Liver Building and you have successfully built relationships with local establishments to showcase pupil’s artwork.’
At Smithdown Primary School, together we grow as artists, thinkers and creators. Our Art and Design curriculum is designed to inspire curiosity, imagination and self-expression, enabling every child to see themselves as an artist. Through an inclusive and carefully structured curriculum, children develop the confidence to experiment, reflect and communicate visually.
We aim to nurture creativity through exploration, following the AccessArt principles of valuing the creative process as much as the final piece. Our pupils learn to appreciate art as a way to understand themselves and the world around them, celebrating both local and global artistic traditions. By studying local artists and makers alongside great artists, designers and architects throughout history, children develop a sense of cultural identity and cultural capital that extends beyond the classroom.
Art is taught both as a discrete subject and through meaningful links across the wider curriculum, allowing children to make creative connections between subjects. Teachers planning is supported by the AccessArt curriculum approach, which promotes exploration, reflection and resilience.
In Early Years, children explore colour, texture, and form through open-ended play and experimentation, developing fine motor skills and creative confidence.
In Key Stage 1, pupils use a range of materials to draw, paint, print and sculpt, learning fundamental techniques in colour, pattern, line, shape and texture. They are encouraged to discuss art and use sketchbooks to record ideas, observations and responses.
In Key Stage 2, pupils refine their technical skills and experiment with a wider range of media, developing personal style and expressive control. They investigate the work of significant artists, architects and designers — including local and contemporary practitioners — to inspire their own work.
Sketchbooks travel with pupils through the school, evidencing their progression and personal journey as artists. Digital media and technology are used purposefully to enhance creativity and expand the ways children can make and present art.
Teachers provide constructive feedback and use ongoing formative assessment to ensure that all pupils — including those with SEND — make strong progress and feel pride in their achievements.
By the time pupils leave Smithdown, they have:
Developed the knowledge, skills and vocabulary to express themselves creatively and confidently.
A deep appreciation for art in its many forms, understanding its power to communicate ideas, emotions and cultural identity.
Built resilience, self-reflection and problem-solving skills that extend across all learning.
Experienced the joy of artistic discovery, collaboration and personal growth — living our motto, “Together We Grow.”
Through art, our children learn not only how to create, but how to think like artists: curious, reflective and imaginative citizens of the world.
Today we have learnt why Britain rationed during WW2 and why it was so important. Firstly, we guessed how much food people were allowed. We have created rationing posters to convince others!

In Year 5, we have been designing our sets for Goodnight Mr Tom, either based in Little Weirwold or London. The children did a fantastic job of thinking of the different dimensions and what props they will be designing.

Last week, Y5 created art work using setting descriptions from our class text ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’. We highlighted key phrases then accurately tried to recreate the wonderful village from WW2.

We finished off our second prototype today for our DT unit. We labelled our work with key vocabulary and then created some designs to stick onto our arms.
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Year 2 worked so hard on their carbon printed poppy art for Remembrance Day
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To think about those who have lost their lives, we created some rhyming poetry. We based our poems on poppy fields, just like our art work.
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Year 2 had a beautiful remembrance morning. We wrote acrostic poems and created some beautiful poppy artwork.

Year 3 have started Remembrance Day by focusing on some art work that uses paint, fabric and stitching. When they are dry we’ll add some stitching on them to add colour and texture.
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Starting our new book, we met a character that loves the sun light stroking her skin as she dances. We used this image to create our own to show how the sun makes the girl feel.
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Today the children have enjoyed making fire work pictures using magic glue and glitter 😊
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A lovely afternoon spent bringing an to end this half term’s topic of nature. Using crayons and paint we produced our concluding piece.
A great big thank you to everybody that came to our Stay and Play this afternoon. We had so much fun making magic wands, playdough hedgehogs and decorating room on the broom characters.
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Great effort on our final piece in art. Painting with scissors has been a great skill Year 3 have gained over the last term. No pencil markings, just free hand cutting. Everyone has become more confident with this technique and we have some amazing collages of some Ancient Egyptian art work.
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Today, year 4 began their final piece of their still life art topic. They made contributions to how the still life should be displayed, they felt the objects to add texture and chose their own sketching method. 🌷🍌🍎🎨✏️
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We have had a wonderful time learning about Diwali and more about the Hindu religion. We heard the story of Rama and Sita and why Hindus celebrate this important festival. We were even gifted some Diva lamps to decorate – which we loved!

We have been leaning all about the celebration Diwali. We made Diwali lamps out of salt dough and decorated them with bright coloured paint and glitter. Don’t they look amazing!
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We had a wonderful workshop this morning to celebrate Diwali and reinforce the work we have already done in Hinduism. We listened to a story, danced and created lanterns.
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We have been using straws to make skeletons in our playdough area. We used our creative skills to think about where bones need to go.
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We think our sketches are perfectly matched to our ‘comicography’work we completed yesterday!
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Yesterday morning, we went for a story, map activity and craft activity at the Palm house. In the afternoon, we followed our map and and completed some fieldwork around Sefton Park. We spotted many human and physical features of the park and added how we felt in each place on our map.
We have looked at sketching parts of a chosen picture to focus in on different sections. We are getting ready for next week, when we’ll be recreating our chosen picture using the painting with scissors technique.
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Great work using Matisse’s style to recreate some Egyptian pictures. We only used scissors and glue. Our cutting skills are getting better, well done Year 3.
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This afternoon we created artwork inspired by Yinka Shonibare. We worked so carefully!
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We loved finding out about Andy Goldsworthy and Hassan Hajjaj and how they were inspired by exploring, collecting and recycling. We had a go at making our own natural art. What do you think?
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WOW! Just look at these posters informing the reader about the Giant Panda !
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Today we completed four drawings of our leaf. We used colour, sketching and continuous lines. We even did one with our eyes closed! We have some amazing artists in Year 2.
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Great work from Year 3 today trying to recreate Henri Matisse’s work. We cut up pieces of paper to make collages.
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We practised drawing artwork like Yinka Shonibare’s on our whiteboards today. Next week we will recreate this piece of art in our books using pencil and chalk.
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In art, year 4 have been practicing their sketching skills in our ‘still life’ topic. We practiced hatching, crosshatching and stippling. The children really enjoyed using the sketching pencils. We then put these skills into action by sketching the fruit in front of us.
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We listened to the story ‘The tiger who came to tea’ today. Later we painted pictures of the tiger. What a busy Monday we have had!
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Wow! We started our new art topic this week and had a go at our first double page spread! I couldn’t be more proud of you!
Check out some of our amazing work!
In PSHE we looked at what a nightmare school would look like. We are very lucky not to have a school like these and we have people around us to keep us safe, support us and help us grow.
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Year 2 spent the afternoon exploring artists and their inspiration.

We continued our art unit based around Andy Warhol today by looking at colour and shading.
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We are learning about Andy Warhol and Pop Art and will be applying the technique to animal art to link with our Science and Geography units of Evolution, animal adaptions and endangered animals.
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Year 3 had a lovely experience this morning designing cakes based on their local area. Lots of great ideas and presenting skills being used.
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We have started looking at different lessons that both have links with Ancient Egypt. We’ve spotted lots of clues that suggest we will be looking at this topic this term.
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A big thank you to all our families that have helped create some art work based on the Titanic. We were blown away by all your efforts.
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377Reception have been super crafty over the last few weeks reading all about Pirates – they have been making paintings of pirate ships, telescopes, pirate flags and even treasure maps! 🏴☠️
We have started our new history topic of Ancient Greece and for few minutes this afternoon, we had a go at sketching Zeus.
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Just a snippet of our fantastic artwork from Chatsworth Street School in the past and what it looks like now. 
Amazing skills practised by Year 3 today! Continuing with our 150 year celebration, we used charcoal to create an image of our school from the 1960s.
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Year 3 have been exploring artists who use natural materials. Anna Atkins created one of the first books with photographs in it without using a camera! We practised the same technique she did nearly 180 years ago. We used light sensitive paper and natural things we found to create our cyanotype photos.
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In art today, we learned about Anna Atkins who was the first person to publish a book of photographic images using the process of cyanotype. We used water colours to recreate some of her art.
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We have loved starting our new art topic. We looked at Frances Hatch who gets the pigment out of things like grass, rocks and poo! We used soil to help us write about Frances and the work she does.
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We started our new art topic today and researched a new artist, Frances Hatch. She creates her images using natural materials, such as soil. It’s safe to say everyone enjoyed using soil in their work today. 🎨
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We enjoyed painting sunflowers as we watched our own sunflower seeds begin to grow. We shared a story called Camille and the Sunflowers and looked at a famous sunflower painting by Vincent Van Gogh to help us with our painting.
For science week, we researched Ruth Wakefield. We learnt all about the temperatures needed and the variables that she changed. We then had a lesson in cookie making with our wonderful cook Monica and decorated the cookies with her face.

We created a beanstalk using green ribbon and paper. We imagined it was leading up to the giant’s castle.
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As part of our Science Week work, Year 6 learnt about Ibn Al-Haytham, the man credited with inventing the pinhole camera. As our Lowry portraits were so good, we couldn’t resist applying our artistic skills to this wonderful scientist too.
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Some extremely proud artists of their work today, and why not, as it is absolutely STUNNING!
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To begin our British Science Week activities, year 3 researched a new scientist. We discovered that Alexander Miles invented automatic elevator door in 1887. We completed a research activity on the IPads and created our own art piece of Alexander using art skills of continuing the picture and shading.
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Year 3 had a lovely day celebrating world book day. We read the story ‘101 Dalmatian’s’ and completed a book review on this. We also created our own dogs out of cups and black circles. In the afternoon, we learnt a new art skill in pointillism to paint our own Dalmatians.
All the costumes were amazing, thank you for yours efforts.

Today we had a visit from Cruella De Vil who wanted to steal all of the Dalmatian puppies, luckily the classes were able to find all 101 of them and saved the school! What an amazing World Book Day 2025. 
Today the children have had lots of fun dressing up as their favourite characters. We enjoyed learning all about the 101 Dalmatians and trying to find them around our school. We had lots of fun designing and decorating our own Dalmatian dogs with paint and cups!
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Year 6 have drawn their own versions of some books they have enjoyed reading for World Book Day.
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To accompany our learning about the circulatory system and the heart, we have produced some of our own artwork and posters linked to the topic.
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Year 3 had a great afternoon making their own recycled paper and adding their own designs to this.

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Y3 have been busy making their own paper out of pulp this morning with our visitors from Metal.
We made some fantastic Supertato pictures using real potatoes to print with.
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We started our own versions today of one of Lowry’s most famous paintings.
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What an amazing start to our art project. The children created their very own paper and then decorated it. Next in our sustainability art project is to up cycle clothing. We can’t wait for the outcomes.
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Our designs for our 150 Year bunting are really coming along. We are going to stitch “TOGETHER WE GROW” along with some pictures that remind us of school.
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We made a ceramic mosaic tile in groups using glass tesserae. Our designs are stunning! 
We made art that we would find in Palaeolithic caves. We worked together and made our caves walls as realistic as we could.
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We are really getting to grips with sketching and painting in the style if L.S. Lowry. Please enjoy some more of our work.
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We tried our hand at creating street scenes in the style of L.S.Lowry today.
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We had an amazing afternoon in our lion dancing workshop. Happy Lunar New Year!

Year 4 designed their Roman inspired mosaics using technology before creating their own paper version.
We’re very excited to create our mosaics next week using tiles.
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Today, year 3 mixed their history knowledge on the Palaeolithic cave people with their art skills by recreating cave art with charcoal. The children worked like our artist Laura McKendry and completed a group activity on the floor. This allowed them to work on a bigger scale and move around their work.

We all collaborated to create cave art using charcoal. Combining art skills and history knowledge means amazing work!
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We created some designs that we may use for our 150 year bunting. We will practise stitching so that we can attached our designs.
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Yesterday we created artwork using a colour wheel to discover complimentary colours. We then created mosaic patterns inspired by Gaudi’s Trencadis technique. The media we used was oil pastel. 
We have been finding out exactly this! Along with research and presentation, some of us sketched our own pictures of Emmeline too!
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After trying Lowry figures in perspective, we had a go today at sketching a group of figures.
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We all loved exploring charcoal, mark making and smudging on our page. We remembered lots of information about the artist we are studying as well – Laura McKendry.
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Our story this week is Ness the nurse. We have been painting pictures of her.
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Today we had a try at sketching some figures in the style of Lowry. We think they are great for a first attempt.
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We had a lovely afternoon starting our pottery. We followed our designs to make an object (bowl, vase, cup) and etched some designs in. We are looking forward to painting in the next couple of weeks.

Our first lesson in our new art unit of an artist study: L.S. Lowry. We are finding out about his instantly recognisable style and most famous paintings.
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A wonderful afternoon with our fabulous parents and carers.


What a lovely afternoon! Thanks to all the parents that came and helped out with the winter crafts. They all looked amazing.
We had a lovely morning with our Hands assembly and our DT craft activities. Thank you to all our adults who turned up to support us.
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Today in our art lesson we looked at different examples of Arabic calligraphy and have had a go at our own.
Reception and Nursery B have really worked hard to deliver a magnificent performance, full of wonder and magical singing in front of all our wonderful families this week. I would like to thank all of you for your support in taking the time to come and watch the children, as it really makes the difference to your child’s growth, as it builds their confidence. We loved learning all about the twinkly story, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed performing it to you. 
We think some of these mosque pictures are incredible!We drew them as part of our RE unit which includes learning about ‘Ummah’ as part of the Islam religion.
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We’re now in the Islam section of our RE unit and we are learning all about the sense of community and how the mosque plays an important part in bringing the community together. We took the opportunity to utilise our artistic skills too.
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11:00 11.11.2024
Huge respect in our class to recognise the soldiers that have fallen in the past. We did a minute silence in the morning and then created amazing poppy art work based on our art topic ‘painting with scissors’ in the afternoon.
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We are really proud of our drawings. Our sketching skills have improved so much.
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After learning about Remembrance Day and importance of the symbol of the poppy, we had time to sketch our own poppies using pencil and oil crayons.
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We used our skills and techniques we have been practising by replicating how Henri Matisse created his art. We applied this method to our Ancient Egyptian topic in History.
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Year 3 had a wonderful time learning all about the celebration of Diwali and how it is celebrated within the Hindu community. We had lots of fun using a variety of different coloured paints to make Diya lanterns. We looked at and talked about different rangoli patterns and made our own ones. We have lots of amazing artists in our class!


We are having so much fun making our Diwali lanterns with rangoli patterns.
Today, year 3 had a workshop based around Diwali. The children enjoyed learning about this celebration. They learned how it called ‘the festival of lights’ and created their own pieces of art that candle lights are placed in. We got to dress up and took part in a traditional Diwali dance.
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Today Year 3 looked at the celebration of Diwali and enjoyed watching how it is celebrated. We enjoyed looking at the different activities and looking at how the Rangoli designs are made!
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Today we are designing our Diwali lanterns for next week. We have learnt the story of Rama and Sita and thought about why Diwali is celebrated in Hindu religion. We are trying to focus on using Rangoli patterns.
Today we having been using different oil pastel techniques (sgraffito, dry blending, cross-hatching and tinting) to figure 


out which ones we want to use for our landscapes. 




We had so much fun painting our colour wheels and understanding how different colours are made. We discussed primary and secondary colours.
We are loving how are paintings are starting to look and how each piece has its own artist’s interpretation.Thank you Claude Monet for the inspiration through our ‘Impressionism’ unit.
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2GH have created some wonderful observational drawings of our leaves today! Check out the details in these images! Good job Year 2!
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Year 2 have made their own pictures out of natural materials that we have collected.
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Year 3 had a great afternoon applying their painting with scissors skills to some Ancient Egyptian paintings. We discussed the pictures and what we could see, using our art vocabulary. We then had the challenge of focusing on a small part of these images and then had to recreate this.
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Today in Year 5, our budding artists dived into the fascinating world of one-point perspective and atmospheric perspective! 🖌️🌌 They transformed ordinary views into extraordinary landscapes, learning how to create depth and dimension in their artwork.
With guidance our students experimented with lines and shading, making their drawings come alive. The focus on perspective not only enhances their artistic skills but also encourages critical thinking and creativity.
Join us in celebrating their hard work and skill!
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We are painting the next painting in our series of impressionist sunrises / sunsets. Using Claude Monet’s work as our inspiration, we will soon have our own two set collection of sunrise themed paintings.
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Year 4 had a wonderful afternoon exploring traditional and contemporary still life artwork. They produced gestural drawings for a piece of artwork by Giorgi Morandi.

We have started our journey into Impressionism and after noting our observations, we are now researching one particular painting.
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Some AMAZING entries for the Merseyside Police competition! Children have worked hard creating lovely pieces of work with great messages as well. Well done to everyone who has submitted already. Last day tomorrow (Friday 13th September).
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We used Henri Matisse as our inspiration for our art topic. We used his method of painting with scissors to make our collages.
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Take a look at some of the fantastic musical instruments we have made in our Art lessons this term.
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We are starting to learn about all the different styles, colours, shapes and uses of Ancient Greek pottery here in Y6.
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We had an amazing afternoon erupting our volcanoes! We even had a very dangerous and violent composite volcano with thick magma which increased the pressure when erupting.
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Happy Eid to all our families celebrating! We had a lovely day and week celebrating with all our children and adults.
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Year 3 had a lovely day at New Brighton! We collected a range of natural materials from the woods and the beach, and used these to create a painting of the seaside. I think everyone’s favourite part was playing in the sand!!!!

What a week we have had! Year 3 had a lovely trip to New Brighton to find natural resources so that we could create landscapes in the theme of Frances Hatch. We glued on things we found and used water to extract the pigment out of them to colour paper.
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Here is a FABULOUS finished skyline picture to accompany our Geography work on our ‘Walking Tours Around Liverpool.’ Amazing work from this young artist.
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Look at the incredible sketch one extremely talented member of Year 6 has drawn!
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We have started our watercolour skylines to link with our Walking Tour of Liverpool which we wrote in Geography.
not finished yet, but they’re looking good already.
Year 3 used the pigment from different foods and natural resources to paint and mark make.

Super work creating our Bronze Age Bell Beaker pots. We created a similar shape and added patterns to them.

Year 3 used a very old way of producing photographs without a camera. We used light sensitive paper to create a cyanotype capture. The children created their designs using natural resources found around schools – similar to Anna Atkins.
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Year 3 had a wonderful afternoon creating cyanotype art pieces, influenced by the Artist we are currently exploring, Anna Atkins. The children collected a range of natural materials, placed them on Cyanotype paper, let it sit in the sun for 10 minutes, removed the design and rinsed the paper.
Don’t they look amazing!!!

In Geography, we have been designing our very own islands. When completed, they will show OS symbols and we will locate places using 6 figure grid references.
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We are so proud of the work our Year 6 have produced within our Lowry unit. Displays everywhere!
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Since we have been studying L.S. Lowry, we took a trip to The Lowry Museum in Salford and took part in a portrait workshop after viewing some of Lowry’s famous paintings. We had such a fabulous day!
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To celebrate the new lunar year, we have been getting crafty in class making representations of dragons using a variety of resources. Look at our fabulous dragons! We also made our own lanterns after learning about the significance of the colour red.
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We worked hard in art today to make expressive collages of the Titanic.
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2GH have been painting using primary colours. We made sure that the paint was thick so that we could move it around the page and created our own ‘impasto’ techniques.
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Following on from our characters, we had a go at one point perspective street scenes in the style of L.S. Lowry.
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We have been sketching figures in the style of L.S. Lowry.
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After learning about Mosques, we followed step by step instructions to create our own geometric Islamic patterns. Now they are designed, we are going to colour. How symmetrical can we make them? ?
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A group of our artists are currently working on a mural displaying scenes from Hansel and Gretel, a story we read and worked with last term. Everything has been lightly sketched on and now the girls are applying the colour. We can’t wait to see the finished piece!
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We thought some of our ticket designs were just far too lovely not to share!
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We created our own versions of the Liverpool skyline one night during The Blitz in World War Two.
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We are learning all about different types of transport. We have been making our own hot air balloons using different materials and decorating them.
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We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.
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We were so blown away by this painting that we simply had to frame it! What a wonderful interpretation of Claude Monet’s ‘The Poppy Field’ by a very talented Year 6 artist ??
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As part of our Diwali celebrations, Year 6 made lanterns displaying the symbols of, not only Hinduism, but other religions of the world too.
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2GH made some beautiful poppies to help us remember today.
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For Remembrance Day, we read the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and after discussing the content, we embellished the poem with images of poppies.
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We have created some beautiful poems after reading Flanders Fields and used watercolours/charcoal/pencils to create some poppy artwork to mark Remembrance Day.
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Stage 1 in our replication process of ‘Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge’ by Claude Monet – colour mixing. Impressionism for #smithdownart
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This afternoon 5EHD have been looking at different watercolour techniques ahead of using them as part of a mixed media piece. #smithdownart ?
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We’ve made such a lovely start to our new mixed media landscapes art topic! #smithdownart
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4KM had an amazing art lesson creating their own mood boards using different colours for positive and negative emotions. The children also discovered how they can portray a mood in still life drawings? #smithdownart
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4KM had a great art lesson this afternoon? the children started off by exploring the texture of their shoes and then explored textures in still life art work? #smithdownart
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4KM had a great afternoon creating their own still life artwork!! The children used a lot of different techniques to create their artwork???? #smithdownart
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4KM had a great afternoon completing their artist study about Paul Cezanne. The children explored his life and paintings ? #Smithdownart
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Super start to our “Painting with Scissors” topic with a focus on Henri Matisse. Amazing inspiration applied to their own work✂️? great work Year 3! #smithdownart #theartsatsmithdown
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Look at this amazing artwork inspired by Yinka Shonibare #smithdownart
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After looking at spirals in art, these superstars decided to make some spirals out of play dough!?
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We have been learning to draw spirals. This superstar made a spiral using the Lego #smithdownart
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Before starting our new Art topic ‘Spirals’ – we had a quick practise drawing them on the playground with chalk. What do you think? Are we ready to start creating them in lots of different ways? #smithdownart
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Year 2 have been reading ’The Beautiful Oops’ and thinking about how we can celebrate our mistakes and turn them into something special. #smithdownart @SmithdownPrimY2
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