Last week, at the culmination of this year’s Take One Picture project, the whole school, from Pre-school to Year 6, performed to a packed audience of parents and other family members. 

As well as taking a more traditional art focus on the painting (Henri Rousseau’s, ‘Surprise’) each class also took a broader arts-based focus on the picture. Their appreciative audience was treated to percussion and chanting from our pre-school, who had focussed on rain storms. Their performance was enhanced by the children wearing the tiger masks that the had made. Reception Class put on a fashion of marine-animal-inspired headwear, before singing two animal songs. Year 1 sang ‘Tiger, Tiger, Orange and Black’, Year 2 recited poems they had written, and shared animations they had made, based on those poems, Year 3 performed a very menacing tiger dance that they had choreographed with Mrs Annis in their PE lessons, Year 4 gave a group performance of the poem about a tiger, that they had written, Year 5 recited a range of their own poems inspired by the picture (including limericks, kennings, and haiku), while Year 6 performed a musical piece that they had written, played on tuned instruments.

The show ended with the band surprising the audience, in connection with the name of the painting, by playing ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’!

It was a wonderful way to end a very creative and focussed few weeks. Thank you to all of the children and staff, who worked so hard on their poetry, music, dance and animations, and thank you all of the parents who came along to watch.