St John’s N.S. Ballisodare 5 th Class Theme – War Horse Craftsperson – Ana Vahey

First Day of the Programme We met Ana and she told us about herself and her craft. Initially we looked at some images of horse sculptures, made from metal, willow and wool. We discussed, with Ana, what we would like to do for our project. We then discussed how we would go about drawing a horse. We broke the shape of the horse down into simple shapes e.g. circles and lines.

Our Work On our first day we drew horses.

We used circles and lines to draw simple horses.

Working with Wire We used wire to form horses. We used our drawings as a guide.

Day 2 of programme * We discussed what we wanted our horse to look like. * We drew some sample sketches of what the horse could look like on the board. * We decided, initially, that our horse would be standing, upright, on four legs. As we were working on our horse, we found that the legs were proving to be very difficult to make. * So we altered our design and we decided to go with this design.

Working with willow * To start with we had to bend the willow to get a feel for it. * Then we started to make lots of different circles out of the willow. * We then started to construct the structure of the body.

Here are some pictures of us working on the body.

As the day progressed

Day 3 * During day 3 we took the horse out of storage and secured it in the ground, with wooden stakes. * Then we started weaving in willow in through the horse!

End of Day 3! * Because of its height we needed to use a table to get up to his neck to attach the head! * We finished off our horse with great pride. It was an amazing success and we are all so proud!

What we learned! First of all we learned how to draw horses out of circles, before actually building the horse! We could apply this skill to drawing other animals. Secondly, we learned how to make horses out of wire, using our pictures as a guide! We had never worked with wire before. On the second day when Ana came, we were put in teams and each team went out and learned to work together, as a team. We had fun together while building our horse out of willow!

What we learned continued Also, on the second day, Ana drew some sketches of horses on the blackboard. We had chosen a horse with four legs, but as we worked, we found it was too difficult and it was going to take up too much time. So then we decided that we would make a horse with its two legs up in the air! So we learned a valuable lesson here – that sometimes you need to alter your plans, if they are not working out. On the third day everyone went outside and learned how to secure it into the ground with wooden stakes. We also learned how to maintain our horse!

Curriculum Links We read the novel “War Horse”. We studied the history of World War I. We watched videos that showed what life would have been like in the trenches. In drama we created still images of the main points of the story in the novel War Horse. Geography- we learned how the war changed the map of Europe. We wrote letters home, to loved ones, from soldiers fighting in the war. ICT- PowerPoint presentation. This is our PowerPoint on our project

War Horse!