We have been reading picture books written and illustrated by the fabulous artist Petr Horacek over the past few weeks. The fiction theme of our topic ‘The Farm Shop’ led us to read ‘The Greedy Goat’ and ‘Look Out, Suzy Goose’ (which the children made the connection to another story we had read called ‘Rosie’s Walk’ by Pat Hutchins).
 

Our art topic this week learning about colour (see previous posts https://inskip.lancs.sch.uk/blog/2022-03-24-15-15-00-colour  and  https://inskip.lancs.sch.uk/blog/2022-03-24-15-30-17-tertiary-colours). Petr’s use of colour is fantastic, the children have been inspired by the illustrations in each book we've read so far, so I chose ‘Butterfly Butterfly’ to be the hook for our final art activity this week for the children to apply the skills they’ve learnt and it has been a great success!

After looking at images of real butterflies in books and digitally on screen, lots of discussion about the colours, shapes and reasons for the patterns on wings, the children drew a butterfly in pencil. Then they drew another in their sketch books remembering our maths learning about symmetry and trying hard to match the size and shape of the wings on each side. Next they planned the colour design of the wings and symmetry in the sketch books before painting their original pencil drawn butterfly. 

After the previous two colour mixing activities I gave the children the primary colours, white and a few others to choose freely and experiment in mixing and creating new colours for their butterflies. It was so lovely to see the joy in their faces as new colours appeared in their mixing trays! There were lots of “look at this”, “look what I’ve made” and lots of brilliant adjectives being used to describe their new colours and names given to them. I am so proud of their progress. 

Take a look at these photos …
 

Art - Butterflies LS