Our Big Art Project: Still Life with Ukelele

For much of Terms 2 and 3 our class was busy creating an artwork which was quite complicated. First we had to make a 3-d ukelele out of cardboard...

We had to work collaboratively to be successful. Here are the steps we had to follow...

First, we taped the sides to the top and bottom of the cardboard ukelele shape. This created the sides and made the ukelele look 3-dimensional.

Next, we added tape to the top layer:

 And then put on strips of white A4 paper that we sliced off with a ruler. We did this to get a really sharp edge rather than soft, ragged edge. We used slightly watered down PVA glue to glue the paper down onto the cardboard.

 The paper machied ukeleles dry outside the classroom...

Next, we painted the cardboard 3-d ukelele shape. We use house paint as it was better at covering the cardboard, and the colours were much better than the acrylic paints we had.

While we worked on our ukeleles we sketched lots of vases and flowers for our final painting. The teacher bought some canvases for the class so parents wouldn't have to pay to have the finished artwork  framed.



The Painting Phase:
We used yellow chalk to transfer the vase and flower designs to the canvas. We worked ont he under-painting of the flowers and the background.

When this had dried we put more details in our flowers and vase and once dried we did some final details using a sgraffito technique.

Finally we finished our painted canvases. 

The next step was to put the neck and final details on to the painted ukeleles. This had to be done by the teacher as the washer and button details were very small and hot glue came though the holes and had to be handled carefully! The string details were also put on carefully with a silver and gold pen to give an optical illusion of strings.

Then, a glue gun was used to glue the ukeleles on to the canvas with the still-life painting of a vase and flowers.

This project took two terms to complete but we were very happy with the realistic ukeleles we created! We certainly persevered...

We showed our paintings at our school Art exhibition at the end of Term 3 and we were very proud.

We think we will never forget our year of learning the ukelele. Our paintings will remind us of the fun we had!

Penguins and Seals: Our Learnz Adventure

We have been learning about penguins and seals in New Zealand with the  amazing Learnz Organisation. We have been using online resource material to learn about penguins and seals. We will be going on a virtual trip to a penguin colony and seal colony on the Westcoast of the South Island.

We have audioconferences booked for  Wednesday 7 Novembr and Friday 9 November.  We have read the background materials and have come up with some "fat" questions for the scientists. We can't wait!

Using the Learnz materials, we looked at the Department of Conservation's penguin nesting box plan. We thought we could make one and send it down to Westport for the DOC officers to use. BUT... when we asked a freight company for a discounted price it was still going to cost us $99 to send the box we made down to the South Island.

Luckily, the scientists started talking to each other and we soon had scientists in Auckland wanting to help us find a home for the Little Blue Penguin nesting box that we built with the help of our school caretaker, Mr A, and our trainee student teacher, Mrs S.

The box took shape like this...
The Plan:

We looked at the plan and shared it with our caretaker. He was so keen he cut out the pieces before we had made the template pieces! Thank you Mr A!

Then we put the pieces together.... lots of screws and woodglue.... but we didn't see that some screws were longer than others... so we undid the structure more than once!

We are so thrilled by our first nesting box we will be making a second one. We want to thank our terrific caretaker for helping us so much.

We also want to thank the DOC staff us who also helped us find another home for our first nesting box. It will be exciting to see if it ends up on Motuihe Island or Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf.

We really enjoyed this project and could get a real appreciation of just how small the Little Blue Penguin is. We also won't forget how useful a rectangular prism, together with a cube, can be for one of our most lovely little penguins.

Geometry! Exploring the Features of Cylinders

The Kiwileles Rehearsal! Our ukelele Day Out

Since Term 2 Room 13 has been learning to play the ukelele! It has been really great to learn how to play this magic little instrument. One of the great things about playing the uke is that we can sing and play at the same time... so it has been a lot of fun.

Sixteen members of our class have committed themselves further and have joined up to a smaller group who want to be part of the Kiwileles Festival in December 2012. This is a great opportunity. Between 2,500 students and 3,000 students will play at this incredible music event which is the biggest student ukelele event in New Zealand!

At the end of Term 3 we went down to East Tamaki School for our only rehearsal.

Check out the photos!