Our Computer Artwork

This morning when we first arrived we saw a computer with a graphics tablet screen set up on the free art table. The graphics tablet is used with a special pen and you can draw straight on the screen. The screen had a black piece of paper on it just like the night sky. Alongside the black paper image was a whole selection of different sized stars, planets, moons pieces to make a rocket and even an astronaut. To make a space picture we could select the stars we wanted to use and move them to where we wanted to place them in the night sky. We could also move, resize and rotate the astronaut and put him/her in the picture too. Later we are going to add our own faces to the astronaut image using the computer too. It was fun using the special pen with the computer and although a little difficult at first we soon got the hang of how to make the stars and planets the colors we wanted. On the main table was the space picture we started as a group a few weeks ago. Today we used some colored pencils, pastels and more stickers to add more stars, planets and spaceships like the space shuttle to complete the picture. We will put the picture on the ceiling so that we can lie down and see all the stars and planets while looking up at them. On the second table some of us managed to add Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus to our mobile. We used the glue gun with the teachers help to stick them on and then hung them from the ceiling with the rockets. We have only 1 more planet to add; Neptune which will be the furthest planet from the sun. After having snack we got ready for the park and today our own ‘Life Books’ were very popular in the library area. We like showing our friends our family pictures and telling them all about the people we can see in them. The park was nice and sunny and the balls in the fenced area were very popular with Olivia, Marc, Tokutaro and Ryan today. When we came back to the classroom we pretended we were getting on a rocket and flew up into space. We did a space-walk with our friends and then got back in a rocket to go to Neptune. By the time we got to Neptune we were very old, like 20 years old. We then looked at how to make nice circles on paper. We tried to draw a big circle for the sun but it was difficult to make it look correct and so Darren showed us how to use a ‘compass’ to draw circles. The compass was just big enough to draw a large yellow sun which we then helped to cut out. Arata placed the sun in the center of a sheet of white paper. Some of us then helped cut out the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We wanted to put some circles around the sun showing the rotation of the planets around the sun but the compass wouldn’t go big enough and so we used a sharp pin, a piece of string and a pencil to draw big circles for Mercury, Venus and the Earth. In the afternoon we drew the remaining circles and added the words for each planet by carefully looking at the first letters. Have a great afternoon.