Whanau Koru Artworks

At the start of the year you want to build relationships with children and it's really great to embrace their whānau.

This year I decided the children would create a koru artwork based on their own family.  I thought we'd use paint and use a variety of textures.

I developed a template for the children to follow.  Below are some of the tasks the children completed before starting their final artwork.  They also got to explore tones of colour using pastels and the colour wheel.

Whānau Koru Design Family Tree based on the 'Koru pattern'  
Task 1 - Use the koru pattern to create an artwork about your whānau (family). Your koru patterns can grow out of each other, touch each other, be large and small.

• List family members you want to include in your Koru Family/Whānau Tree.
• Draw four different compositions.

Task 2 - From your four compositions pick the two designs you really like.  Re-draw these two designs and start to explore what colours you could use.

• Will you have different colours for different people in your family?
• Will you use different tones?

After completing Task 2 the children picked one composition and sketched this on to card.  When all artworks were finished they were uploaded on the class blog for families to view.

Using PVA glue to add textures on to the koru patterns.

Layering paper to create texture... 

Using plaster of paris as a texture.  After all textures were applied and had completely dried the children coated everything in white acrylic paint.

Starting to apply acrylic paint...

Some of the completed koru artworks.

QuickTapSurvey

QuickTapSurvey...came just in time for my class.  Before they get right into creating their truffle recipes, as part of our technology unit, they had some questions that needed to be answered..

What an authentic context for them to create a survey to gather answers to their questions.  They wanted to know information like: what flavour of truffles people liked to eat, what coatings did they like on truffles and what price were people willing to pay for 6-8 truffles.

First you need to set up a username and password on the site  QuickTapSurvey. The interface is user friendly and I helped the children to create one truffle survey all truffle groups could used.  Under different questions is a section that shows you very clearly what type of questions you can ask, like multi choice many answers or a yes/no question.  This was really helpful for the children creating the survey.  You get to have only one active survey on the 'free' version.  Once the survey was complete it was published.

Then the rest is just so easy.  You need to download the QuickTapSurvey App onto your iPad.  Login, and you're survey appears! So easy and so simple.  Of course the free version only lets you have the survey on one device.  If you do use two devices then it will ignore responses on the second device (unless of course you upgrade and pay).

My class have really enjoyed visiting other classes, selecting a group of children to complete their survey.  We've enjoyed looking at the analytics and so far they've found out that more junior children have never tasted truffles before....roll on truffle making!

There results so far...