Year 4

It has been a brilliant half term in Year 4! After a successful first topic exploring money, maths has gone from strength to strength! The children have been fantastic at finding area and perimeter through a range of different contexts! We look forward to revisiting these concepts next half term as well as moving onto time! 

In writing, the children have amazed us with their compassionate, persuasive writing all about the current refugee crisis. When reading their speeches aloud, the children have spoken confidently, clearly and with emotion in their voices. We are incredibly proud of the empathy and love that the children have brought to our sanctuary centred topic. 

The artists in Year 4 have been thrilled to try out a new style – 'painting' with scissors. The idea comes from Henri Matisse, who later in his art career, became incredibly creative with his cutting technique to produce fascinating collages. Some of his work is abstract, whereas some we feel has a clear artistic focus.

In our classes, we have attempted to mix monotone with vibrant! Looking to Matisse for inspiration, newspaper mixed with bright coloured paper creates a great effect. The best part is, we were able to choose what we wanted to stand out the most - using the colour - and the parts we felt needed to shape the background, using the newspaper.

Matisse once quoted ‘Creativity takes courage’, which we artists believe to be true of our new style. Rather than relying on the pencil to plan and sketch our ideas before creating, we got stuck right in! The cutting, sticking, layering, folding, curling and scrunching of the paper brought our collages to life and made the realistic pieces even more real, whilst the abstract was given that extra little bit of detail.

We cannot wait to see what other creations the Year 4’s come up with!