Doon Convent Primary School takes part in the 2012 Artist in Residency Program run by Limerick County Council.
Our Artist's program "Once Upon a Time" is the beginning of our Visual Story Telling....
Junior Infant Class present their finished Artwork...
The RED, YELLOW, GREEN and BLUE Groups from Junior Infants Class present their Art Cartoons to the rest of the school. This is a big achievement for them, they're only 5 and 6 years of age and are very brave standing up in front of older boys and girls to tell their Stories. Their Teacher, Mrs. Haugh, and I are very proud of them.
We divide up our stories into different parts and each of us paints one part of the story, we call this a scene''. We then paint each of our scenes onto different shapes of paper which Toni gives us.
Junior Infants painting their Cartoon Story Scenes
Today, we make MIND MAP sheets for ourselves. These Mind Maps help us to place all our drawings and ideas down in one place. We can write words or make more drawings to help tell the stories we are imagining. We roll our cubes onto our Mind Map sheets and record the symbols, making our stories as we go.
JUNIOR & SENIOR INFANTS....
We are going to make Giant Cartoon Stories, Toni says that she'll help us. So we get writing and drawing on our Mind Map sheets to see what stories we are going to tell...
Junior & Senior Infants rolling their Story Cubes,
drawing and writing their stories.
5th & 6th CLASS...
We think in terms of Storybooks, Dramas, Paintings, Cartoons, Puppet Shows…. We decide on which format each group will go for. We also decide on which materials we will need.
6th Class concentrating hard on their story ideas,
will they write a book, draw a cartoon, direct a drama...
DRAMA: Title "DIRECTION OBSESSION"
Crazed fan steals a band member from a famous group. The group cannot perform because they’re missing one of their group and they can’t do their routines or sing their songs. The fan sees the effect of her stealing and sets to put things right. Moral taking what you want and the consequences
STORYBOOK: Title "THE CLOCK"
Alice goes to her Grannys house for the weekend of her birthday. She’s bored and cross that she’ has no big party. Alice’s Granny gives her a birthday present of a beautiful antique clock. Alice goes to her room in a sulk, she falls asleep to the ticking of the clock, and has a dream. Alice dreams of another girl about her own age Together they explore secret things about her grannys house. The tell each other stories and they have a secret saying so when they’re lonely all they have to do is say the magic saying and they won’t be alone. The girl disappears as Alice wakes up to hear her Granny calling her for her tea. As she goes down to tea her Granny says the magic saying and suddenly Alice realises that the girls from her dreams is her Granny. She realises that her Granny is as lonely as she is and that
DRAMA: Cowboys and Indians
DRAMA: Title "THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERHEROS & BETTY"
CARTOON STORYBOARD: Girl and her Dad are poor, they find a pot of gold>holiday
DRAMA: Cork park girl gets lost loses parents mean Harry
We finish making all our symbol drawings from Day 3 and have all our selections made, ready to draw free hand onto wooden cubes using a special permanent pen. We finish all our drawings onto our wooden squares. Junior and Senior Infants glue down all the symbols we've drawn onto one half of a large coloured sheet: Red for the Red group, Blue for the blue group and so on..
Then we roll our wooden cubes and see which of our symbols turn up. Toni asks us to see if we can make up stories from the symbols we've rolled. We put cubes into bags, all ready for next week.
We’re back from Easter holidays and it’s been ages since Toni has been to see us, but when she asks if we can remember all the names of the drawing parts of the body we remember them all, even ‘torso’, and Toni is amazed with us!
We start today by making some more ‘Doing Drawings’, for a few minutes, just to wake us up a bit.
We then move on to our page with the Titles and 6 boxes to remind ourselves of what we were at. Toni says that each group must select the best 6 ‘Doing Drawings’, the best 6 Magical Things Drawings’ and so on, and gather these 6 best drawings onto one square of paper; that’s one square for Magical Things, one square for Doing Drawings…..
It’s a bit confusing because there are a lot of drawings between us all, but we soon decide on which we like best and each group is happy with their choices.
Today we start by making some ‘Doing Drawings’ for 10 minutes. Toni asks us if we can remember all the special terms we learnt last week and we remember nearly all of them, 'torso' is a bit hard, but we’ll remember next time!
We turn to a new page and write the title ‘Doing Drawings’ and underneath we draw 6 blank boxes. In these boxes we choose six of our favourite ‘Doing Drawings’ and draw them into the blank boxes.
We talk about other titles we might use, PLACES, MAGICAL THINGS, SIGNS and FACIAL EXPRESSIONS. We have fun figuring out which things we’d like to draw in each of our boxes. We figure these out in our group because we all have to agree on the drawings.
Symbol Drawings from 5th & 6th Class
We have a break now for our Easter Holidays, and lots to think about... ...our favorite places, magical things....
Let me introduce myself, my name is Toni Breen and I hail from Castleconnell. My connection to Doon, Co. Limerick, goes back a long way. My Granny Breen was from Doon, she was Margaret Hayes, a daughter of Hayes 'Manager', a name give as my Great-grandfather was the creamery manager, and to this day we have a large extended family of cousins in and around Doon. My Granny Breen became a Primary School Teacher in the 1930's, and was posted to Herbertstown National School, where she met and married my Grandfather, Jimmy Breen from Caherelly. Their only daughter Lilian Breen entered Doon Convent as a postulant in the early 1960's. I vividly remember visiting the Convent in the 70's with my Granny to see Lilian. We were always treated like royalty, brought off to the kitchen by the older nuns to see if we couldn't find a few extra biscuits, and left out to run in the Convent gardens while Granny and Lilian had a chat.
My dad Willie, Auntie Lilian, my Granny Breen,
and my Uncles Paddy and Seamus at Doon Convent.
I have recently returned to education, studying for a Masters in Art & Design Education, and grasped the opportunity to be involved in the Artist in Residency Program in Doon. I felt at ease as I walked through the Convent Primary School yard, adjacent to the very same garden I used to play in as a child with my sisters.
I think my Granny Breen and Auntie Lilian would be happy that I'm back in Doon....
My dad Willy, Granny Breen, Auntie Lilian, Grandfather,
Uncles Sheamus and Paddy at Doon Convent in the mid 1960's
Today is our first day together and we spend a little while introducing ourselves. We then hand out our Art Workbooks. We each have an Art Workbook, made up of sheets of newsprint and coloured sugar paper which are stapled along one edge. We use our Art workbooks to make ‘Doing Drawings’ which are great fun.
The Yellow Group, Model and Artists at work in Junior Infants
Toni gives each of us a turn to be the Modeland we make different poses. The idea is that someone can tell from your drawing what the model is doing , that’s why we call them ‘Doing Drawings’. The Model has to hold the pose for one minute and the Artists (that's us) draw the main parts of the body.
Some of our "Doing Drawings"
We use words that we know like Head, Knee, Hip, and others which are new like Torso, Pelvis and Pivot Points, which mean bits that can twist and move. Before we know it we have loads of ‘Doing Drawings’ made in our Art Workbooks and Toni tells us that she'll see us next week.
In 1997 Limerick County Council established an Artist in Residency Schools Scheme, open to all primary schools in the County. The aim of this scheme is to offer pupils in your school, the opportunity to work with an Artist on a once off project, negotiated with the Artist and the School.
The artist may be from any discipline such as Visual Arts, Dance, Literature, Drama, Music, Photography, Film, etc.
The residency should be for a minimum period of 4 weeks and a maximum of 9 weeks,1 day per week.
In February 2012, Miss Haugh, our Junior Infant Teacher and Toni Breen, our Artist, were successful in applying to Limerick County Council and secured a place on the Artist in Residence Program 2012 for Doon Convent Primary School. We start in March....
