Diving Deeper @ Bromley School Connecting picture books with art, literacy and Digital technologies as opportunities to express ourselves creatively.

At Bromley School, our Diving Deeper programme was developed as a way to create more opportunities for our students to engage with the visual arts and digital technologies, to practice skills and techniques to express ideas and to model to teachers how these concepts could be developed further in their curriculum programmes. As an Apple Distinguished School since 2017, our staff and students are confident users of Ipads and digital technologies but we were interested in developing these skills to a deeper level. Each term, classes attend 2 two hour sessions, each one focussing on a different text. The sessions are planned and facilitated by Ms Nicholls, one of our Associate Principals. As a Reggio Inspired school, the value of the arts as one of our hundred languages which value children's voice and expression and the strong connection to the natural environment, are key parts of our Guiding Principles.

Sweep by Louise Grieg

Sweep tells the story of a boy who is swept away by his emotions and explores his impact on the world around him until he can calm.

Close observation.

Using watercolour paints to recreate with a focus on colour.

Exploring the watercolour tool on Sketches School.

A completed collaborative canvas

For this session of work, students created paintings using watercolours and observation from invitations set up around the space. They painted real leaves in either warm or cool colours for a collaborative piece on canvas and used Sketches School on their ipad to create a piece by using the watercolour tool to paint over a photo they had taken on the same theme.

The book by Oliver Jeffers, The Heart and the Bottle, is about the loss of a loved one and corresponding need to protect ourself by putting our heart in a bottle where it cannot be hurt again.

Using the camera tool to take photos of our composition.

Cropping to get the best photo.

Using our images to sketch with a focus on form.

The book This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers, tells the story of a boy who tries to have a moose as a pet although the moose is uninterested in belonging to anyone. The question asked was "What colour is friendship?"

The book

Capturing a series of photos of fruit at different perspectives.

Choosing the best four photos to create on Pic Collage. This was air dropped for printing out.

Using an Art Thinking routine to observe closely then sketch into Art Books as practice.

Observing closely.

Transferring our image to a larger piece of paper before painting with watercolours then background in a contrasting colour.

My Shadow is Pink tells the story of a boy who's shadow is different to everyone else and how he feels about that. When he starts school, will his classmates accept him and his shadow? A gorgeous story about being different and belonging.

Setting up a composition with found materials, using torches and an Ipad to capture images.

Using paint to recreate our photo focusing on shadow and tone.

How can we create shadows?

Completed pieces.

Abigail and the Birth of the Sun has Abigail's dad explaining the birth of the Sun to Abigail to show how we are all connected.

Students began by using their Ipads to take photos of winter trees in our environment.

Practicing sketching to observe the different shapes of the trees.

Painting backgrounds with the focus on colour and tone.

Painting details in silhouette.

Completed pieces.

Appreciate