Being inspired by the incredible patterns and forms of beetles, butterflies, moths and stick insects from around the world, the children started on making beautiful symmetry prints using acrylic paints as well as drawing with oil pastels. They spent an entire session just playing with the paints, building up layers of textures and colours on A3, A4, A5 and A6 pieces of good quality thick art paper which would be strong enough for constructing but still easy enough to fold and cut. I don’t like to give kids rubbishy art materials just because they are young! I want them to feel that their artwork deserves quality ingredients.

On week 2 they cut their papers and constructed some amazing creatures, wild enough to rival nature! This demanded some real engineering skills and I was so impressed by how they all helped each other and shared their ideas around for making them 3-D. I had shown them a few ways to turn a flat surface into 3-D one but actually they invesnted their own ways too! Have a look at some of their creatures which wouldn’t look out of place in an undisturbed jungle…