It was International Lego Day on Wednesday 28 January 2026 – a global celebration of the iconic building brick that has inspired generations of children, and adults, to dream big and build bigger. Inspired by the idea of transforming simple bricks into extraordinary ideas, this week in The Art Room we had great fun making art with Lego!

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch takes place this weekend, an annual event that sees hundreds of thousands of nature lovers build a picture of how garden birds are faring in our own back yards. So, in The Art Room this week we took inspiration from our feathered friends and set about building our own bird-themed pictures by drawing, not from what we could spot through the window, but from the shapes of art history and the striking paper Cut-Outs of French artist Henri Matisse.

This week in The Art Room we continued our drawing discoveries by zooming in on detail.  Building on last week’s activities and our understanding of shape and form, our focus was on texture and how to represent different materials and surface detail in our drawings, by simply using a pencil.

We kept things simple in The Art Room this week and for our first session of 2026 we eased ourselves into an exciting new year of creativity by practising our drawing skills.  Going back to basics, we explored how mark-making in its simplest form can be arranged to form patterns and shapes. Providing us with a foundation for building an image, the combination of line and shape opens up endless creative possibilities for capturing the many things we see, experience and dream up in the world around us.

It started to feel a bit festive in The Art Room this week as our imaginations roamed free among sparkling skies, snowy vistas and the inky shadows of a winter wonderland.

Thursday 27^th November marked the beginning of National Tree Week. This annual event, now in its fiftieth year, raises awareness about the vital role trees play in our environment and provided acres of inspiration for the Woodland theme we’ve enjoyed exploring over the past couple of weeks in The Art Room.

It was Odd Sock Day on Monday 10 November, an event that takes place during Anti-Bullying week to promote individuality and kindness.  So, this week in The Art Room, we asked everyone to design their own pair of mismatched socks to reflect their unique personality, interests and imagination.

The Art Room was back with a bang this week with a dazzling display of firework art to welcome in the new half term!

We moved from sunny yellow to vibrant multicolour this week in The Art Room to highlight innovation and resourcefulness in support of Recycle week. 

Friday 11 October 2025 is World Mental Health Day. Taking inspiration from UK charity Young Minds, we asked everyone to say “Hello Yellow” in The Art Room this week to celebrate the joy and positivity that can be experienced through making art and in coming together to share in mindful creativity.

This week, in addition to painting the beautiful shapes and colours that we can see in the natural world around us, we explored how to capture the dynamic change and movement of autumn by creating super fun agamograph artworks that, like magic, change depending on how you look at them!     

This week in the Art Room we had the tunes, we had the bunting and we had the vibes as we hosted a fun-filled arty party to celebrate our first birthday and an exciting opening year of children’s art classes! 

With a nod to International Dot Day, which took place on 15 September, and in the spirit of Vashti, the young artist who features in the popular children’s book, The Dot, by Peter Reynolds, The Art Room was filled with creativity, courage and collaboration this week! Encouraged to just “make a mark and see where it takes you” the children were ‘popping’ with ideas and rose to the challenge of making their own ‘dotty’ art works using only circles, dots and rounds.

It was fantastic to welcome everyone back into the Art Room this week for a brand new term!  We have loads of new arty projects and activities planned for the coming weeks but, for our first session back, we wanted the children to have a moment to recall and to share the exciting adventures, big and small, that they have enjoyed over the summer break.  

Sprinkled with oodles of fun, the Art Room wound down for the summer break this week by sharing scoops of creativity and colourful sweet treats with our ice cream-themed activities, the cherry on top of what has been a fantastic first year of sessions!

As the summer holidays approach and we think about spending time with friends and family, we asked the older children in The Art Room, “where would you like to wake up tomorrow?”  Using The Open Window, Collioure, by Henri Matisse, as inspiration, everyone designed the view they would most like to see on opening up the shutters.

We’ve been exploring all the wonderful shapes and colours of the rainforest over the past couple of weeks in The Art Room with some of its wild inhabitants taking centre stage in our tropical creations.

With temperatures soaring this week, we kept things chilled in the Art Room by enjoying the simple things in life, creating art works inspired by picnic-themed still life activities.

This week in the Art Room we encouraged everyone to dive deep into creativity and make a splash for World Ocean’s Day, which is celebrated internationally in the second week of June.

“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” is a phrase attributed to Albert Einstein and one which we wholeheartedly believe in at The Art Room. Each week we aim to inspire our little community of young artists to embrace their creativity and, through self-expression, imagination and innovation, unlock their potential for growth and happiness.