Urn-ing the glory

Over the past week we have been doing some intensive art history.  We have been exploring the ways in which history can be passed on through artworks.  In particular we have been focusing on ancient Olympic drawings.  We discovered that during the Olympic celebrations many artists traveled to Olympia to create many different pieces of art which captured important aspects of the games.

Room 14 looked at several artworks and we discussed what the symbols in the pictures represented.  For example. in the picture below we can tell that the figure is Zeus- king of the gods.  We know this because he is surrounded by thunder and lightning bolts.  Zeus was also the god of thunder.  If we look closer we can see that his throne is not sitting on a floor, rather floating in air.  We think this represents that the figure is a god and not a human king.  The pose he is in is the same as the statue in the temple of Olympia, where he is looking over all of the athletes.

Today we began to make our own 'Olympic Urn's'.

• Firstly each child has designed their own graphic to symbolize something important about the Olympic Games.

• Secondly we worked in partners to construct a paper mache urn.

• Next we will paint our artworks onto the urns.

This is all part of understanding how history can be passed down and interpreted through visual arts.

here are some pictures of the children beginning to build their urn: