To begin our fortnight, we all gathered in the amphitheatre to reveal the theme of the two weeks – Tributes! Everyone received an envelope with a special letter inside, telling them whether they had been selected to participate in the 2025 Tribute Event. All of 5J opened their letters privately and did not reveal the secret inside. They later found out that they had all been selected! After this, we explored the story of Theseus and the Minotaur and why the chosen tributes were a pivotal part of the Greek myth.

Our first project in the art studio was to explore mazes and labyrinths. Do you know the difference? A maze contains dead ends and a series of different passages with one ultimate way out, however a labyrinth only has one winding path leading you to the middle and eventually the exit.

Before drawing mazes, we explored lots of different images and began playing with string, cloth, gum-tape and squared chalkboards to create different mazes and labyrinths. This use of concrete manipulatives helped us to begin understanding where the path is and where the wall is.

From this, we began to create mazes in our sketchbooks, thinking carefully about parallel lines, perpendicular lines and using two colours to create a distinction between the path and walls. We reflected on our plans and gave feedback around the closeness of the walls to the edge and making sure some walls were not too narrow as this would not work as well when scaled up onto our cardboard.

We scaled up our designs onto cardboard, again using two colours. Then, we began using corrugated card and measured the walls precisely. We folded the corrugated card so there was a flap and secured the wall down with masking tape. When joining perpendicular walls together, masking tape was essential to create stability.

After securing the maze with masking tape, we realised that the tape was flapping after 24 hours so we applied PVA glue to strengthen and secure. Finally, we began to explore gradient and how we can create darker and lighter areas in certain areas of the maze, considering where the beast might be hiding and how the exit may be lighter to symbolise freedom.

Mrs Fox and Miss Jackson did a fantastic job choreographing the glam-rock song for the Arts Fortnight. This was focused around the ‘Tributes’ in the labyrinth and explored the trials and tribulations they faced when entering. It was such an energetic, fun and fast-paced dance which involved a lot of timing and technical dancing. Through the dance, this helped us to reinforce our learning in Art and Writing.

For our next Art project, we began to explore coiled pots. First, we discussed the different purposes of pots and vases in Ancient Greece. We considered the purpose, durability and appearance of pots with each pair deciding on what they would like for their idea. During the first day, we played around with plasticine, looking at how to create coils and use blending to merge the plasticine together to build a pot up. After this, with time sensitivity due to the clay drying in 60 minutes (!), we committed to the clay pots. The pairs did an amazing job at communicating together and preparing coils in advance as one of them created the cross-hatching and slip. The teamwork was absolutely fantastic!