Project:  Printmaking – Bird Hunt
Participants:  Year 4 pupils
Partnering with:  Warwick Road JI&N
Artist:  Shelley Burgoyne
Science topic:  Which Wild Plants and Animals Live in our Locality

We are focussing on the habitat of our own local area, Fieldhead, and the birds that live there. We will look at the variety of trees and birds and consider how to identify and classify these. The specific link to the Change theme will be that we will look at how birds adapt to the seasons and survive environmental changes. The Forest School area will be a great resource for this. We will be doing printmaking in the first session and producing a series of small hand printed postcards to be used in Literacy activities. Printed artworks will develop as pages for a ‘bird science’ book. Along the way we will use relief printmaking, drawing and painting techniques.

We are looking at the changing habitat of the locality at Fieldhead and the birds that live there. We have started to make drawings of birds in our area. Today we used these to make small printed pictures and we also printed postcards. We discussed how birds adapt to the seasons and survive all the different environmental changes. We are going to post our postcards with messages on them to some other pupils who are also doing a Change project.

“I decided to draw an owl because it’s my favourite animal. An owl eats worms and berries. After we drew the bird we had to print it, and press it down hard for ages. We printed it onto the postcard as well”

“I think the printing was so exciting!”

“We all drew and printed different birds. I drew an eagle as well because it is the biggest bird of prey. But it won’t be in Fieldhead”

We had a very busy session! We made some small drawings and writing about the foods that birds eat in the different seasons. We discussed how birds adapt to the seasons and survive all the different environmental changes. We made more prints of birds as well and the colours are really interesting and fun. We have got a lot of variety of bird life to think about.

“I love learning about birds”

“I enjoyed drawing and shading with the pencil crayons and exploring the colours”

“I liked rolling the colour onto the printing image”

“I enjoyed colouring and making the small piece of writing about the bird food”

Today we made some drawings of birds and where they live in our locality. The forest school area has a lot of activity. We also finished our little bird prints and added more colours. T he results were really exciting. Mixing and layering the colours was new to us! The bird pictures are really lovely and have been a very engaging way to talk about the habitats and adaptations that birds and animals make. The class have really enjoyed this science project and learnt a lot, everyone has worked really hard and had so much enthusiasm!

“I have been painting and even mixing new colours today in my science project. I enjoyed dabbing the ink on with my finger to do the multi-coloured part”

“I learnt about print work and about what birds eat today. I liked doing science in art”

“I have discovered that you can make amazing pieces of art with just five things. 1 Ink, 2 roller, 3 sheet, 4 paper, 5 palette knife. I have also learnt about the different birds in our area”

“I printed birds in my science project and I learnt how to draw a blackbird. Thank you Shelley”

Pupils found the whole experience extremely engaging and thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the project. This was evidenced in the fact that they were opting to complete homework tasks related to finding facts and information about birds. They have a much keener interest in the natural world around them as a result of this project. They have also gained a lot of experience in using printing techniques that they had not tried in school before, and would have liked to develop their learning further by learning more drawing techniques, and more about colour techniques/colour mixing.

The pupils have already become more involved in our brand new Forest School and are now working on another science project, which sees them using nature to create sounds and musical instruments.

Auveen Twomey