P-2 ~ Wau Bulan: Malaysian moon kites

The students in Foundation, Grade 1 and Grade 2 are learning all about Malaysia as part of our Asia Literacy Program this year.

To complement their studies in class, we learned all about kites and kite making in Malaysia. In particular, we focused on the 'Wau Bulan' or Malaysian moon kite. I am sure if you ask one of the P-2 students why they are called moon kites, they will be able to tell you!

To create our own 'Wau Bulan', we cut out the intricate shape and pasted down a mix of beautifully patterned papers. We were very careful and tried to overlap the papers to create interesting patterns and effects.

Our finishing touches included decorating our kites with sequins, adding ribbon and stapling on crepe streamers. Some students were very clever at cutting and stapling their own streamers - quite a fiddly task! Here are some of the finished kites on display in the Art room. They look so eye catching as they spin around in the room.

Grade 3/4 ~ Festive Elephants of India

The Grade 3/4 students are learning all about India this year as part of our Asia Literacy Program at Marlborough. We have enjoyed exploring the vibrant colours, patterns, jewels and embellishments that adorn the elephant procession in the city of Jaipur, during their Elephant Festival.

Over a 3 week period, we created our own Festive Elephants of India. First, we began by painting some papers in greys and whites and adding texture by using a variety of tools (scrapers, skewers, bubble wrap etc). While the papers dried, we practised drawing elephants in our Art journals.

We then traced the outline of our elephants (some students preferred to work with a template) onto our painted paper and cut them out. We glued them onto coloured card and were then able to start decorating!

We used green hessian to make the elephants' rugs/blankets, carefully pulling out a few strands to make the blankets frayed on the bottom. Then we adorned our elephants with jewels, sequins, pom-poms and a variety of bling! Adding lines, patterns and textures with oil pastels also proved quite popular.

To add even more decoration to our artwork, we used patterned scissors to cut strips of coloured paper to glue down as a border around our elephants. Mounting our artwork on black card and drawing a simple patterned border with oil pastels created our final touches. Well done Grade 3/4 - your elephants look amazing! What a colourful display they make up in the office!

Foundation ~ Watercolour birds

Our Foundation students have settled in so well to the Art room and shown wonderful responsibility with art materials and tools. Well done!

We have had lots of fun experimenting with the art elements of line, shape and colour recently. We created these wonderful watercolour birds, using black oil pastels and water paints. We talked about shape as an element of Art and the different types of shapes we knew. To decorate the body of our birds, students chose one shape in particular. I think they look amazing and each one is so unique!