Star of the Sea Passage West -TAP Project - Third Class students & Teacher Caroline Barret

Photo credit Jim Coughlan (Evening Echo) Journalist Ellie Bryne visited Star of the Sea as part of her two page spread article reporting on our project and how I believe drawing should be part of the school curriculum.   

We took the schools name as our theme for the project - Star of the Sea - Here is the plan I proposed and carried out , the project was completed just before the first lock down began , unfortunately we couldn't have an open exhibition to the public because of the restrictions.
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 STARS – we will look at celestial navigation, there are 58 main stars used in celestial navigation.  Each star has a name, linked to animals and myth, when each student picks a star by lucky dip, they will come up with drawing that represents that star e.g. “Capella” Aurigae – which means little she- goat.  These simple line drawings will then be mono printed onto a large sheet of paper , white on black. 

1. Blue – The colour blue has a very important place in art history, Ultramarine which means ‘beyond the sea’ and is made by crushing a gemstone called Lapis Lazuli into a paste, didn’t exist in the art world until the 14th and 15th century when Italian trades men imported it from mines in Afghanistan, and brought it into Venice by boat where it was exchanged for gold.
   We used Yupo paper and ultra marine blue to create the sea drawing , we also gathered a collection of words associated with water and each pupil wrote their word in silver on the drawing.
   
   

1. Water- Why is water blue? Why is the sky Blue? How can we draw water? How many words do we know that are connected to water, H2O, iceberg, uisce, eddies etc and new words like a limnologist.  We will have a word each that is connected to water and it will be part of the final drawing.  Also, what is the role of water on earth and in our bodies, understanding how water is life, water gives planet earth life. 
   

Our set up for the water colour on yupo , each pupil took it in turns to add their water lines onto this group drawing.

The water colour on Yupo paper had a beautiful effect , very vivid blue with silver text hand written by each pupil.  It really captured the essence of the sea.

We made blue paper sculptures which were all shaped and molded around each pupils hand celebrating our uniqueness and the value of the handmade.  Originally the plan was to create an installation along with the drawings in their exhibition , but this was not possible due to covid restrictions closing schools in the first lockdown.   

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1. GOLD – Another precious mineral that has an important place in art history and is linked to sea merchants and trade.  We used some gold leaf in our paper sculptures to represent what we value today, our environment, clean water and clean air etc.  

A pupil writing the name of her star on our nautical navigation map

Each one of the pupils designed their own star , and learned its name and meaning, then we put them altogether to make the mono print.

Detail of the final piece , the star map and the water drawing.

One of the highlights of our project was the trip to Blackrock Castle Observatory.  Both of the 3rd classes came on a coach and we spent an amazing morning getting the full guided educational tour, fully immersed into all things space , but specifically focusing on nautical navigation , each child got to see their chosen star from the project in the star dome projection tent and our amazing guide Caoimhin was full of knowledge and stories for each one. This space tour was gifted to us very generously by the castle events manager Clair Mc Sweeney and they offered us a space to exhibit our project in the castle, but again covid prevented  this from going ahead. The trip to the observatory brought our project to life, it enriched our learning and sparked great curiosity and inspiration for all the pupils.  Overall , the drawing project connected all the various subjects together , from art history to STEAM to local history and gave a great sense of connection to the pupils who all worked on this together.  

And we made the Evening Echo newspaper !