In Visual Arts we have been busy reflecting the story of the Children of Lir which we covered in Hisory. In the story the children of Lir were turned into swans and had to wait over 900 years for the spell to be broken.
We decided to use an image of a swan in a lake with a mountain in the background on the Interactive White Board as a stimulus for our art. Mr. Frawley handed out black sugar paper. The children had to do an outline with their pencils. Mr Frawley broke the drawing down into simple steps to follow. He allowed time for the instructions to be followed while demonstrating on the white board. There were a few straight lines as well as curved lines. There were slight drawings similar to letters or short parallel strokes. The backdrop of the mountain showed depth in the drawing. By using the pencil on the black sugar paper initially it allowed an outline of the drawing to be created so that the use of the pastels would be easier.
The children were then given the pastels to share between their groups. Mr Frawley asked the children about the story and what they could recall. There were a lot of comprehension and recall questions to see if anyone could remember the various characters, the periods of time spent here and there, the places they spent their time, the sequence of events and how the spell was eventually broken. The children were shown various mixture of colours that could be used in the backdrop of the mountain. Each pupil did their best and enjoyed using the pastels!
We had lots of fun creating our swans and retelling the story of The Children of Lir.
