This week we thought about how we identify ourselves and others, looking at eyes in particular. The children worked with partners to see if they had been paying attention to the colour of each other’s eyes. We worked with watercolour using even more water than last week to create the watery colours within the iris. We were inpired by the watery colours in Quentin Blake’s album cover for the singer James Blake.

The children thought that they would like to work on their own eyes and portraits but that it was hard to draw ourselves because we couldn’t see details without a mirror. Some suggested taking photos using ipads, phones, cameras or computers so we could do more work on ourselves. I showed the children photos of me during primary school and they figured out that the eyes didn’t change colour. We discussed how we might change as we get older and I asked the children to find family photos that showed relatives such as parents, siblings and grandparents when they were 6, 7 or 8 years old. The children made up Roald Dahl-style words to describe themselves and will upload the results.

Some things we learned:

Simple things take time for younger children and labelling is one of them. I think that it’s worth it -labelled work tells a story of development over time and adds value to the experience. It also tells the children that what they are doing is not a throwaway activity.

When working with other people it was hard to keep eye contact for long -the children found that quite challenging.

I need time to look at the children’s work with them and talk about it so we will do that next time.

The children are coming into the class more confidently for the session -great sign.