Linking to our Stone Age topic this term, we have been looking at timelines.
Mrs Seath has helped us create wonderful cave paintings to decorate our classroom. Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, but cave paintings can also be of recent production: In the Gabarnmung cave of northern Australia, the oldest paintings certainly predate 28,000 years ago, while the most recent ones were made less than a century ago.
We did some research on the background and purpose of Stone Age Art. After developing an understanding that the purpose was to communicate and tell stories through this imagery, the children created Stone Age Cave Paintings of their own. They carefully composed collage backgrounds, chalk handprints and pastel figures of animals, huntsman, and cave women, to tell their own individual stories, which they proceeded to tell to the rest of the class upon finishing them.
The second Stone Age activity was making papier-mache Stone age Axes, where the children learnt the process of building a three-dimensional object through crumpling paper into shapes and layering it with papier-mache soaked strips to enhance the overall finish of the form. They also learnt ways to decoratively tie the elements together with twine to achieve an authentic Stone Age effect.
