Sleepers - 1

Whilst hearing Michelle Magorian’s ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ read aloud as a class book, the children were also learning about life on the Home Front during WWII. At one stage, this included looking at some of artist Henry Moore’s drawings of people sleeping in the London Underground during air raids. 

Henry Moore

Following on from this, the children did their own drawings of sleeping figures. They were not trying to copy the Moore drawings, or even relate this work directly to the war. In fact this artwork lead on rather to thinking about homeless people and writing some poems about them. (I dearly wish Onjali Q. Rauf’s ‘The Night Bus Hero’ had been around back then. But of course it wasn’t.)

The children took turns at modelling and drawing. The models were ‘posed’ by the artists. They were lying down (on gym mats) so it was not too hard for them to keep still.  Even so I made sure that the sketches were quick ones, and the models posed for no longer that ten minutes, including regular stretches. I thought that was plenty long enough for children - and some of them found even that an inordinately long time!

Again I think you can see clearly how each child is discovering their own way of drawing, even though they are all drawing 

from direct observation.

(For anyone interested, notes on the teaching approaches that helped children towards these outcomes are on the COMMENTARY PAGES of this blog.)