Let your imagination wander

May is National Walking Month and a great excuse to get outside. So, this week in The Art Room we did just that, looking to nature for inspiration for our creative activities. And having just spent a fabulous weekend walking and talking around the beautiful Lake District, Natalie and Rachel returned to The Art Room armed with oodles of images, ideas and stories to share.

It was a hive of activity in our preschooler sessions as our little artists and their grown-ups got busy making cardboard tube bees and vibrant paper flowers to assemble a playful, interactive artwork. It was great to see the buzz of excitement as the children watched their decorated bees whizz along a string between their colourful blooms, just as they’d seen a real bee zoom among the petals in nature, captured in the short film that Natalie shared from her lakeside jaunt.

Afterschool we took our creative minds for a hike up hill and down dale by working on a pop-out 3D landscape scene. Using photographs taken during Rachel’s trek to the peak of Helvellyn and their knowledge of perspective explored earlier in the term, the children designed beautiful patchwork landscape pictures merging shapes, colours and countryside details with their own artistic flair. The sweep of different vistas at the end of the sessions was a joy to take in but the enthusiasm that grows each week as each child reaches their own artistic summit is an even happier place to be. Where will your next adventure take you over half term? We can’t wait to see!