Project:  Printmaking – Organs of Life
Participants:  Year 3/4 pupils
Partnering with:  Lydgate J&I
Artist:  Shelley Burgoyne
Science topic:  Animals Including Humans

For our Animals Including Humans topic we have chosen to focus on the skeleton and its role. We will look at animals with and without skeletons, changing bodies, growth, muscles and teeth, and using the amazing body, skeleton and body parts to inspire a series of large and small printed artworks. Our specific link to the Change theme will be to incorporate research about changes that take place in our organs as they function and process the constituents that make us breathe, think, grow, move and digest. Our starting point will be to produce a life-size skeleton and body drawing as a group artwork. This will be developed with individual images of organs that will be printed using relief printmaking techniques and added into the drawing. As well as a composite group work we imagine creating a series of booklets of images and writing.

We have started our Animals Including Humans project this week and have learnt a lot about the body and the organ functions already. It was really fun telling Shelley about everything we know so far.   It’s also been interesting today to look in detail at some parts of the body and draw them. We used special pencils. We made large drawings of parts of the skeleton and also the different organs. We then brought them all together as a group image. The whole thing was fun.

“I drew the bone of the arm with shade, tone and detail”

“We all drew the different bones and then we put them together to make a skeleton. It was fun”

“I drew the kidneys and I drew them with blue, red and orange”

“I drew the eyes in pencil and colours. The function is that they help you look”

“I drew the heart, which is used for beeping blood around the body. If your heart is not working right you will die”

Printmaking today was really interesting. We used the research that we have been working on to make our organ prints ready for illustrating the Organ Story next week!   It was really fun starting to plan our stories and make up the characters. Some people added more drawing to the skeleton and the large organ drawing. It’s a real a challenge to work big!

“I enjoyed today when we did the printing. I made a print of a kidney and I liked it when I printed it onto the front of my book. I enjoyed it very much and thank you for what you did with our class!”

“We used rollers to print the paint on to the paper. Before that we had to draw every organ from our Organ Story. We used ink to print onto the paper”

“I enjoyed it when I did of print of the lung”

“I had a very good morning when we did printing especially. I loved it! I have been writing my Organ Story as well”

A busy session and the class kept a really good focus and worked hard. Well done everyone! The Organ Story books that we have created illustrate all the different functions and changes that our bodies make – everything that is happening inside our bodies as we live!   Bringing science and art together has been a really good way to think about the topic, and has prompted a lot of interest from the children.

“I finished my Organ Story today. I made a story about a Brain who comes to help someone who is stuck and doesn’t know what to do”

“It was lots of work to think about all the different bones in the body. It was a big list. We are sad as our artist Shelley will not be in next week”

“We have been finishing a big picture of all the organs in the body. We spent time putting more colours into it. The prints we did last week will be part of this as well”

The children’s excellent knowledge of the body has increased and in our classroom we have put some of the work they did during the project on display and they refer to it on a regular basis.

We visited and the children were so proud to see their work and kept shouting out to themselves “here’s my work, …. here’s your work “. The children were proud to tell other children and staff at school that their work was on display. The children were very interested to look at other children’s work too, having only seeing it on the change website and then to see it they were very impressed.

David Swithenbank