Take One Picture
'Take One Picture' is an Art initiative for primary schools set up by The National Gallery. Each year, children across the UK focus on one painting from the gallery and respond with creative, cross-curricular projects and activities.
This year's painting is 'The Courtyard of a House is Delft 1658' by the Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch
Please see below how each class across our school have responded to the painting.
Squirrels and Foxes
In Year One we looked at the picture and discussed what the lady in the picture might be looking at. We thought she would be looking at one side of the wall. We went outside and used wax crayons to create brick rubbings. We then cut the bricks out and worked as classes to build what we thought the building would look like.
Hedgehogs
In Nursery we explored the face built into the stonework. We looked closely at the features of faces and during Scribble Club we had a go at drawing faces.
Year 2 Owls and Butterflies
We began by practising the skill of observation and reflection. We discussed what we could see. We reflected on what we thought of the painting and what we thought about the artist’s intentions. We focused on the lady and the child. We thought they were Mother and daughter. We thought they might be poor because of their clothing. We inferred what we thought they might saying by focusing on their facial expressions. We thought they might be workers and thought that the sweeping brush and mop bucket was what they used to clean the courtyard.
We then focused on the tunnel and we compared the tunnel to Anthony Browne’s story, The Tunnel. We then wrote character narratives about walking through a tunnel. We focused on making our writing interesting by using a range of different sentence types and adjectives.
F2 - Badgers & Ladybirds
We started the week by looking really closely at the painting. We noticed the brick patterns on the buildings and how the bricks were arranged to create an archway. We went outside and looked at the brick patterns on our school walls. We then became builders and had a go at copying the patterns whilst building our own walls. We were very impressed with our creations and noticed that following the pattern made our buildings stronger. We enjoyed printing brick patterns using rectangular sponges. We had to think really carefully on where to position the sponges!
Next we went on a virtual visit to The National Gallery and saw the painting hanging in situ. Mrs Burton & Mrs Smith explained that everyone can be an artist and set us a challenge of creating a piece of artwork for our classroom gallery. We came up with some really imaginative ideas.
Finally we had a go at creating observational drawings of the painting. We took our time and added lots of detail.
