This is the first post of a new series of guest blogs from some incredible teachers from around the country. First up is Jenny from The Teaching Buzz. You can find her on Instagram @theteachingbuzz.

I love teaching creative art in school, whether it is to my class of 24 or to the whole school of 400 children – the more colourful and bigger the better! Throughout the year we have many school celebrations including feast days, international events and weekly focus themes. On occasion these celebrations provide us with the opportunity to create a whole school collaborative art project – an impactful, large scale, work of art that every student in our school helps to achieve together promoting respect for each other, personal satisfaction, team work and a sense of school community. 

Our first whole school collaborative art project took place during Wellbeing Week and required the children to design a feather using a template. Each year group was given a specific colour to use and the children wrote down their dreams for the future on the back of their feather. All of these feathers, from Preschool to 6th Class, were then put together in the shape of wings and displayed at the end of the corridor for everyone to see. Every child in the school was invited to get their picture taken between the wings entitled ‘What makes your heart soar?’ We were really blown away by the effectiveness of this display.

During Kindness Week we asked every child in the school to draw around their hand, colour it in using a design of their choice and then cut it out. These handprints were combined and glued together to spell the word ‘KIND’ on our big display boards, however the letter ‘I’ was missing as the children themselves created this letter by standing between the K and N. Again, this made a wonderful photo opportunity with the title ‘Be the “I” in Kind’ – a very important message we were focusing on during Kindness Week, and indeed every week.

Out of the school building and to our school garden where every child from Junior Infants to 6th class deigned a rock. Each class was given a theme which included animals, inspirational and kind words, shapes, rainbows and flowers and used acrylic paints and sharpies to create their unique designs. The rocks are going to create a bright and colourful pathway in our school garden – it’s amazing how much space 400 rocks take up!

Our most recent whole school collaborative art project took place quite recently on International Dot Day. Using a very simple template, every child in the school coloured in a dot using different shades of a specific colour assigned to their class. The creativity was amazing. Almost 400 dots were used to create a colourful and vibrant 6 meter display promoting creativity, self-confidence and connection. This display has really brightened up our main corridor and every child that passes it can feel proud that they helped to create it, just like Vashti in The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.

It’s great to have such supportive and willing colleagues too, without them these projects would not be possible. It is a lovely way to bring the whole school community together through creativity.

You can get more excellent ideas from Jenny on her teaching Instagram @theteachingbuzz. Click the icon above to find her page!