Gael Force Winds, a wind trio from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, worked with children at Sanday School, Orkney, on a short musical production based on the children’s story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen.

The nursery children were asked to create artwork based on some of the themes described in the book. They set off on a bear hunt, which lasted four weeks.This is their report: Grass

“We found dune grass that was ‘sharp’, ‘spiky, like a hedgehog’, ‘scruffy’, ‘swishy swashy’. Then we talked about ‘Wheat Field with Crow’, by Van Gogh, projected the image onto a large sheet of paper and used finger paints to copy it. Then we made our own paintings.”

Mud

“We found mud that was ‘quite firm’, ‘very wet’, ‘shallow’ and ‘some mud was very deep!’ Back at the nursery, we experimented making mud with compost and with clay. “Then we talked about paintings by Jackson Pollock and thought they looked like ‘splashes of mud’. We made our own splashy pictures by using a pipette to squirt black paint onto the paper. Then we dragged string through the paint.“We worked together to make a large squirty picture. Then we tried mud ball painting. We painted with our hands, feet and bodies.”

A river

“We filmed water and saw ‘reflections’, ‘light’, ‘sparkly water’, ‘ripples’, ‘shining moving’, ‘splishy splashy swishing’, ‘bubbling’, ‘plop’. Then we talked about ‘Water Lilies (The Clouds)’, by Claude Monet.

We looked to see how Monet used lines of paint to show the ripples and reflections in the water in ‘Bathing at la Grenouill re’ and then we made a reflection collage. We used a whiteboard and a paint program and chalk to paint water lilies.”

A forest

“We visited the forest and saw ‘knobbly trees’, ‘branches that were long, straight and tall’, ‘sharp and spiky leaves’, ‘floppy and soft leaves’. Some trees were ‘brown and had no leaves’. Some trees ‘poked up into the sky’. Some were ‘crissy-crossy like a spider’s web’.“We made a leaf collage and then used chalks and charcoal to make forest pictures.

After we talked about lots of paintings of trees, we worked together to make a dark forest collage.”

A cave

“When we visited the caves, we saw beautiful coloured rocks, ‘red and green rocks’, ‘beautiful shapes’, ‘lovely patterns’, and thought that ‘some stones looked like bears’. We created our own ‘cave paintings’ using chalk.”