We have kicked off our second half term with Arts Week. As a school, we had the theme of ‘Trees for Life’ to understand the importance of the world’s rainforests and the effects that deforestation and forest fires have on the people and animals in the world. As part of this week’s activities, Year 4 were given the artist Georgia O’Keeffe to base our own art work on. We went outside to look at the trees in the school grounds and stand under them to look for the viewpoint Georgia O’Keeffe used in her own work.

We collected leaves from the trees and used them as the bark on our art. Using a range of collage techniques, we applied different materials to create our desired effect. To make our work stand out, we were inspired by Andy Warhol’s use of colour and used this idea to form the background and then grouped the work to create a finished piece of four different colours. To decorate the border, we created a Haiku poem with a tree theme and wrote them around the artwork to complete it.

We also explored rhyming couplets and wrote a poem from the perspective of an endangered animal that lives in the Amazon rainforest. Here are a few examples of our amazing poems. Can you guess what animal they are?

I used to glide happily above the trees,

With each strong flap of my wings in the breeze.

Now I only see puffs of smoke,

And I feel like I am about to choke.

With all this smoke, we are dying fast,

And soon we will be extinct and past.

Please someone save our home,

So we can continue our roam.

By Rosie

My wings cannot be a prize,

And now a huge glow has started to rise.

My species are falling from the sky,

To get over the glow, I will have to fly.

The glow is getting as red as my beak,

I won’t look back, I will not peek.

My species let out a very large call,

I need to save them or they will die once and for all.

By Max