Living. Learning. Together.

This year my class are involved in a year long project funded by the Integrated Education Fund ( I.E.F) - Living. Learning. Together. with 2 classes from a local special school. Since November my class have been 3 times to visit our partner school, once to play together in their lovely new playground & twice to have music sessions with Jo Jingles & play together outside. This month we hosted a 2 day visit from our new friends & all the children (40 in total: 28 of mine & 12 from the other school) got the chance to work with a professional artist - Grainne Kielty from Artworks. 

On the first day Grainne made clay footprints with all the children to be made into an outdoor art piece for Bear Woods.

The children loved pressing a shoe or welly boot into the clay & then looking at the pattern it had made.

On the second day Grainne & the children made some felt, they loved this whole experience & we had a couple of students visiting that day who got totally involved too. 

As the clay footprints are staying in school we decided that each child would get a felt square to take home from the 2 day experience. 

The felt the children helped to make was cut into squares so each child can have one to keep.

Next month we will travel to the other school to work with Grainne again over 2 days to create some more fab artwork. 

It is always lovely to see the children playing together & at this age they are almost oblivious to the wheelchairs some of the children are in. They concentrate on the similarities rather than any differences, so they noticed children with the same wellies or coat or hair bands. 

We will be hosting our partners another day for a drumming circle & then our project will finish with a picnic in the amazing grounds of our partner school with all the parents invited along to see what we have achieved together all year.