This week Nursery have been Artists as they have continued to explore case study two of our expedition; “How do plants grow and change?” The stimulus has been the life cycle of a sunflower. We have been looking at artists who paint flowers, in particular Vincent Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings. However Nursery have compared these during a gallery walk to the works of Georgia O’Keefe (Green and White Lilly close up) , Claude Monet (Water lilies) and Maria Van Oosterwijck (Wilting flowers with black background). As the children began the week by looking at the colours used in paintings, for the purpose of light and dark and how this made them feel?

We practised painting using light and dark shades and talked about what kind of colours make us think of different feelings. The children likened the lighter colours to “sunshine”, “the sky” and happy events. Whilst they thought of darker colours as “dirt”, “shadows” or “night-time”. When they looked closely at the wilting flowers they realised that the flowers in the painting were dying and that the artist had captured them as they had started to “Wilt”, “droop” and “flop”. This made the children feel sad that the flowers had passed their best and they then associated the darker colours with sadness.

The children were challenged to think about; “If the artist was listening to music whilst they were painting – do you think it would make a difference to how they painted? Would it cheer them up or make them feel sad? Make them angry or excited? The only way to find out was to test the idea. Nursery closed their eyes and carefully listened to four specifically chosen music tracks to see if they could hear a difference in the tunes and move in a way that responded to the music? The tracks were; “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “Proud Mary” (a slowed version) by Tina Turner, “Fire Starter” by Prodigy and “Axel F” by Crazy Frog.

They then captured there response to the music in drawing…..

Finally Nursery have used all of their new knowledge and experience to paint their own Van Gogh Sunflowers from a choice of two designs, using either a palette of either angry or sad colours whilst listening to their choice of “Fire Starter” or “Proud Mary”. The efforts made by the children for these paintings and the results have been outstandingly beautiful and such a relevant and purposeful experience. They have had lots of fun and have been exposed and challenged into thinking further about their feelings and responses to music and art.