‘Beech class were lucky enough to visit the Fitzwilliam museum at the beginning of September to look at the painting. The children were inspired and full of questions from the word go, with lots of ideas about how we could take it further. Back at school they worked in small groups and produced a PowerPoint of the story of the painting. The children then used theirpresentations to inspire different classes across the school about the painting and introduce the project.
The following week, the children wrote their own stories inspired by the painting.Year 6 chose the story called ‘Roots’ which was about three sisters who all went off in different directions in life with different lifestyles but their family roots still remained the same. The children decided that the tree would be a reoccurring object where more buds grew on it as the sisters love grew stronger.
The children decided that the time of day would also change as the picture progressed. WE spent some time practicing with watercolours to create the right shade and colours to ensure that they portrayed the different times of day clearly and effectively. Inspired by artist Lotte Reiniger (an animation artist during World War II) the children decided that they would include silhouettes as the characters and objects in the story.On the day of our ‘Big Draw’ we were joined by animator and illustrator Faye Matthews. Faye spent some time inspiring the children with her work and talking about her experience with animation.
Silhouettes certainly proved harder than we thought but hard work and perseverance certainly paid off! In the afternoon, the children planned and then produced the Stop motion film of our painting before we stuck our silhouettes down. Once the stop motion was filmed, the children added music to the background. The music was produced in the children’s music lessons using a range of different instruments to resemble the different characters and parts of the story.’
Miss Donna Peck, Deputy Head and Year 6 teacher
