We discussed what voluntary and community groups are and why communities need them to thrive. We discussed the type of help and support these groups can provide to a community especially in relation to health and well being (as part of be active week).

Next, we researched what voluntary and community groups can be found in our neighbouring town of Oswestry and what services they provide. We found charities who support families of terminally ill children, charities who provide food to those in need, voluntary arts and crafts groups who support people's mental health and well-being and a number of charity shops who raise money for medical research.

We created some mind-maps of all our our local voluntary and community groups and then we took it in turns to say which charity we would most like to volunteer for and why. The video below shows some of the children explaining their chosen charity and why they would choose to volunteer with them.

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This half term we have been researching and studying J. M. W. Turner in our Art lessons.

We began by holding a walking, talking gallery, where we looked at examples of his work and discussed how they made us feel, what we liked most about them and what we liked least about them. We thought about how Turner may have been feeling as he painted each piece of art. 

We then researched J.M.W Turner himself and created an Artist Profile all about his life and work.

After this, we experimented with watercolours, which was the main media used by J.M.W Turner in his art work. We mixed colours; investigated what happened when we added white and black to a colour; investigated the effects of adding more or less water and experimented with colour bleeding (where colours run into each other when two wet colours are painted touching each other) and also tried allowing one colour to fully dry before painting another colour next to or on top of it.

Next, we all looked at some example photographs of 'sea-scapes' (which J.M.W Turner painted a lot of). We chose one sea-scape and all sketched and painted the same image using watercolours, using what we had learnt about the water colours previously. Even though we all painted the same image our final pieces of art work all looked different as we were authentic artists painting our own interpretation of the scene before us!

Finally, we used all that we have learnt throughout the half term to draw and paint our very own original sea-scape paintings. We imagined a sea-scene before us and thought about what we might see, what time of day it was and what the weather was like. Some of us drew and painted a real beach we had visited, some made imaginary beach scenes up, some of us painted sunrises and sunsets, some of us painted summery beaches and others painted stormy seas. Every piece of art work was original and different but each one was incredible!

I have been so impressed with the creativity, thoughtfulness, concentration and enjoyment in our art lessons in Andes class this half term. Each and every child has worked incredibly hard to produce their best piece of art work and the end results showed exactly how hard work pays off!