Monday evening had been spent madly making ready for the trip to Plymouth. Resources were sorted and packed: paper cut for painting, strips cut for word lists, labels made for group work, tokens for talking, as an early start was required Tuesday….

Thursday, and Busylizzie Art has returned from two hectic days in Plymouth. Armed with a large khaki wheelie bag ‘belonging to an explorer / adventurer’, a box of straw hats and a trolley-full of art materials, I ventured into the 400+ pupil school in a rambling housing estate on the edge of the ‘Ocean City’, to work with two parallel classes and their teachers. Developing a Character was the task, a discovery box was the  technique….

Learning through looking – close observation – is something I learned back in the 1970’s, when first training teaching, then teaching in inner London. Providing interesting objects for seven and eight year olds to look at, think about, talk about and then draw in detail, proved to be a hit. The language of art, vocabulary associated with the revealed items and clothing, art skills teaching, relevant literacy skills had all been touched on or developed in some detail, showing something of the possibilities of this approach.

Apart from hitting almost every requirement for Spoken Language in the NC 2014 , reinforcing phonic knowledge, developing skills of inference and deduction, the children wrote lists, and will be going on to expand sentences and develop a paragraph of writing to describe the character they had discovered…

.Colour mixing skills developed…

Next week, Busylizzie Art returns to Plymouth for Part 2, to work with Y4 children ‘Developing a Setting’