I'm Loving Angels In...Crewe

A couple of weeks ago I went to Springfield Special School in Crewe to help some of the Juniors make some giant angels for their Christmas performances.
Here were the plans:

With my two wonderfully helpful helpers, we split the group in two and had them each work on a different angel. The children did all of the design work, then painted their designs onto large pieces of cloth.

They were happy painting away which left us to dish out paint and clean up the mess they made!

After a hard day's work the children went home and I attached the painted sheets to the pre-made frames, and popped a light inside each one to give them an ethereal glow.

Result: two big, colourful angels for Springfield School.

Murals from Sierra Leone

Springfield Junior School in Ipswich wanted four murals based on life in Sierra Leone. So after some consultation with the Head Teacher, and clear instructions to include a barracuda at any cost (he was a little obsessed!), I spent a weekend sketching these four mockups:

The school is twinned with a school in Sierra Leone. They are raising money for a well, and wanted something to reflect four aspects of life in the country: a shanty town, the school, a jungle replete with Sierra Leonean animals, and a tropical beach.

We worked with groups of four at a time. Slowly building up the background, midground, and foreground layers...

...before carefully working in the details.

In the end we worked with almost all of Y4, 5, and 6 over the five days. And I have to say that they did brilliantly.

The murals had a designated place in the Y6 corridor, so I got out the power tools and we stuck them up: