Thirty Days hath September - Day Twenty Two - Milldown Primary School

I have had such a fun morning.
My very good friend James is the newly appointed headmaster at a local primary school and when I was batting around ideas for this challenge, he suggested that I come down to the school and collaborate with some of the children in a project.

James suggested that I work with the year four pupils and that one of their texts for the autumn term was 'Flotsam' by David Wiesner, a stunningly illustrated book which appeals to all ages and encourages the imagination.

Using this as a starting point, I thought it might be fun for the children to create their own book by producing paintings based on the underwater themes in Flotsam - a gift back to them for allowing me to come in and interrupt their day.

I headed down there this morning and the children were introduced to working in collaboration with each other and how to use watercolours. I've always been a big advocate that children shouldn't just be palmed off with cheap materials so the SAA kindly donated some good quality watercolour paper and I took my best brushes down for them to use.

We all had great fun thinking about what we might find under the sea and as their paintings were created, I photographed them and will be spending the afternoon editing them back in to a book, one copy will be given to them to keep in their classroom and the other will be auctioned off on the 30th at the studio.

At the risk of being a spoilt sport, I don't want to unveil all of the paintings for the book, that is for the auction day and for the children and their parents to see first, but I will share with you a small section of one of them, just because I genuinely think it is one of the most awesome drawings I've ever seen.

How I wish I could have thought this up, every time I look at it, it makes me smile so thank you year four, I've had a brilliant day and it has been a complete honour working with you.