Firstly, Miss Mignacca chose people who were sitting and reading quietly to come to one of the two tables and paint on a piece of paper using a house template. We had to paint on the opposite side so that we would use the template as a cut out for later.

The next day when the paint had dried, we needed to cut out the windows. Miss Mignacca cut out most of the windows in the house template because only a few people in the class wanted to do it themselves.

Then we cut out the house template along the lines and folded on the dotted lines.  Once we were done, we glued cellophane behind the windows and folded and glued the house together.

Finally, we put a battery candle inside and we glued the top of the house together and then we were finished!

By Lulu Knowles

This term we have been learning about Japan in our HSIE unit and Electricity within Science. We applied our learning from these two subjects by creating paper cranes with a series circuit running through them.

We have been studying the traditional clothing and leisure activities that Japan has to offer. We incorporated the Kimonos that Geishas wear into our paper cranes. Everyone has illustrated their own patterns based on various patterns of Kimonos around Japan. We began by drawing on our regular paper and then finalised our art on rice paper.

Our class found that “in Japan, the crane is a mystical creature and is believed to live for a thousand years. As a result, in the Japanese, Chinese and Korean culture, the crane represents good fortune and longevity”. We have also studied the book ‘Sadako and the thousand paper cranes’ which is where we got our main idea for our art.

After that, we constructed series circuits to light up the inside of the crane. Our circuit runs under the blue board. We tested the circuit several times prior to creating it within our art.

Finally, we attached the crane, blue foam board and circuit together to create a paper crane circuit which illuminates when in the dark.

Cameras capture light to make an image that we call a photograph. So for the year’s Art Show with the theme of light, it seemed a good choice!

Group shots: glow stick patterns

Portraits: model and painter working with torch light

To paint with light, you need a camera with manual settings. Change the shutter speed to ‘Bulb’ or the longest option (we used 30 seconds). This makes the camera’s ‘eye’ stay open longer to capture all the light as if it happened at the same time. Set the ISO to 100. This makes the ‘eye hole’ smaller, so the background looks black and the coloured lights pop. Set the camera on a tripod so it won’t move during the photo – a remote control helps if you’re using bulb mode, so you don’t bump the camera.

Camera on tripod

Now the fun part! You need to be in a very dark room – no light at all is best, so we covered up windows with fabric, because any background lights will show up in your photograph. We used glow sticks at first, by swirling them around at different heights, speeds, and shapes to make our group shots.

Preparing a group shot with glow sticks

The torch showed up better though – you could put cellophane over the torch for bright coloured light if you wanted. So, for our portraits, one partner was the model and posed with an interesting body shape. The other partner was the artist. They had to hold the torch pointing at the camera and move the torch around the edges of their model’s body, a bit a race car. It was tricky in some places, because if the torch’s light went behind the model or shone away from the camera, you couldn’t see that part in the photograph. A few of our artists tried adding lines away from their model, only painting part of their model, or going over one part more than once, which made interesting effects.

Model and artist preparing a light painted portrait

Afterwards, Ms Salmon used a photo editing program to make the colours pop more, and the backgrounds look darker. Check out our progress shots and finished products!

K Gumnut are learning about different people who help us. We went for a walk around the school to find different people in our school who help us everyday. This is who we found on Wednesday:

Mrs Mitchell is the school Principal. She writes the school newsletter to tell all the parents what we do at school. She LOVES school. Mrs Mitchell makes sure all the children and all the teachers and all the parents are happy. She organises the building work around the school and makes sure the teachers can learn to make the classrooms better places.

Mrs Reed is our teacher. She helps us learn. She teaches us how to read and write. She teaches us Maths. We LOVE learning with Mrs Reed.

Mrs Penman works in the school office. She works on the computer and talks to parents. If someone gets hurt, Mrs Penman helps them get better. She loves Belmore South Public School. She used to go to Belmore South and so did her children.

Mr Arthur fixes things in our school. He works at our school. Mr Arthur said he really likes school.

Thank you to all the people who work at our school and to all the parents and children for making school such a fun place to play and learn.

From K Gumnut