We started off by thinking about last week’s session and looking at some of the words that the children had come up with -some very funny conglomerations. The made-up words took our attention back to The BFG and we talked about the dream jars. I showed that children some Turner watercolour studies. The way that the dreams are described in the book reminds me of how pigment moves through watercolour paint. The children played with watercolour and water to see if they could create similar effects. This was a great way of loosening up.

This week the children have brought in special guests to watch the session and, inevitably to be roped into the experience. There were lots of rather nervous relatives being shown the ropes by the P3’s and P4’s. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss so the children made drawings of the adults in the room. Unusually, the class promised not to look too closely in case they found wrinkles! Some of the drawings from last week were very small so we thought about filling the page this time. The children showed their drawings to their subjects. One adult said the experience of being drawn was terrifying. The children thought this was very funny. Coming back to the idea of dreams and aspirations, we asked the visitors to remember back to the age of 7 or 8 and think about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Some of them shared their childhood dreams with the group.

I wanted to be…

a nurse

a footballer

a beautician

a mummy

a ballet dancer

a vet

a stuntman

When the mums, dads, grannies and grandas went home, for the last part of the session we talked about how people changed over time and I showed them some photos from when I was wee.

The children said that they liked drawing self-portraits as well so they suggested that printed out photos would allow the children to see themselves. Some work was needed on sources of light but the results were really strong and will be ready to use next week.

The children showed some of their work to me -I can see their confidence grow. This week, more children brought photos of family members to share with me, and with the rest of the class, and we talked about family likenesses. Lots of interesting ideas are developing between us.