During the month of November, class 3A started work on a construction art project. We wanted to design and make our own village in time for Christmas. Unfortunately, the snow delayed us but we are still hoping to have our own Winter Wonderland ready in time for our holidays. In the meantime here’s what we learned along the way and the models we have worked on so far.

To begin we had learned about towns and the many types of houses, buildings and places that you might find in them. We also searched the internet to see what these houses looked like – bungalows, two-storey buildings, old fashioned shops, modern supermarkets and churches. Here are some of the types we found:

We then started coming up with designs for the buildings we would like to make for our village. We worked in pairs to come up with our own architect drawings. These included shops, cottages, a church and even a car showroom. We learned about architects and how their job is to design the buildings we see in our towns and cities. We planned each side or elevation of the buildings:

In the second lesson we used old boxes from the photocopying paper that is used in our school office. We thought they would make the perfect shape for our buildings. It’s also a good idea to recycle because we are a Green School. We collected other packages and boxes for the church and the ‘Big Toys for Little Boys’ store afterwards. We used our drawings to carefully mark out the windows and doors that we would need.

Our teacher had to help us with this because we needed to use a sharp scissors. Afterwards we used paints to decorate our buildings. We used white paint first. This covered the red writing on the boxes. Then we used bright poster paints for our finished designs.

Since coming back to school after the snow we have started to put the roofs onto the buildings. We are using black cardboard for this. We are also planning to put windows into them. We will use pictures that we have cut out from magazines and we’re going to stick them onto cling film to make the glass. Some people have made the curtains for their houses already!

We really enjoyed this art project so far and we are delighted to have used recycled boxes in a clever way to make our own village. We learned how important it is to draw and follow plans. Working with a partner for art was great fun too! Now we can’t wait to finish our village – hopefully in time for Christmas and Santa Claus!