Patterns in the natural environment

All the pupils of Garboldisham School spent the morning of Thursday 3rd March in their local village hall with school staff and the Sainsbury Centre team exploring some of the centre’s world art handling collection. In mixed aged groups the pupils excelled in acute observations, discussions, questions and examinations of the objects with drawings and written pieces to record and share. A slide show and reference material gave context to the objects and opened up connections with the local waterways of the Little Ouse and how rivers are used to transport children to school. One of the pupils has cousins living in PNG and proudly showed us all recent objects he had been given and talked a little of his relations’ life there. Next we all went to local small woodlands to visually explore local patterns and make collections to use later in the day. A lot of thought focused on how the natural environment’s patterns inform the pattern making on the objects, such as water and plants. In the afternoon artist Ali Atkins led the three age based art activities, which all linked to the hexagonal shape and developed skills in pattern mark making. KS1 scratched into wax crayon tablets, whist KS2 either scratched in plaster tablets or made clay pieces using impressions from natural found objects. At the end of the day we all gathered together to listen to and share personal experiences of the day.