In reception, we focused on the life of Yayoi Kusama.
 

She was born in Japan and loved to paint as a little girl.

Her parents did not want her to be an artist and told her to marry a rich man and be a house wife. Her Mum destroyed her canvas' so Yayoi started to paint on old sacks.

One day everything she saw came to life as dots. She loved nature and started to paint pictures using dots. She wanted to be an artist so badly she wrote to Georgia O'Keefe, an American Artist.  Yayoi moved to New York, but soon after moved back to Japan as other people started to copy her work which made her sad.

Yayoi wanted everyone to enjoy her work and one day she was asked to share in a famous art exhibition in Venice. She is 96 years old and still paints, builds sculptures and creates room sized installation art in various places around the world. Recently she showcased her octopus tentacles in Paris on the Louis Vuitton building!

We decided to to focus on Yayoi Kusama as our art focus this half term is 'Exploring materials and marks using our imaginations'.  As she also painted lots of sea creatures, this links in with our half termly topic 'Under the Sea'. We are excited to get experimenting to make our class artwork!

We learned about Yayoi and why she uses dots to make her work come to life. She said that when we look closely, the shapes look like cells, and we are all made up of cells. Yayoi said 'we are at one with the world'.  We also read our topic book - Shark in the Dark. This gave us some ideas to link our sea creatures, especially sharks, to our art work. We practiced making dotty pictures using marker pens, by filling in shapes and trying different colours and patterns! 

Different materials were used to create large and small dots in response to our artist. Creating a large octopus in the style of Yayoi Kusama the children thought about colours and details. They wanted to use large circles to represent the suckers on each of the legs. This piece of art inspired the children to write, their wonderful ideas were brought together to create a poem.

We enjoyed learning about our artist and wanted to share the work within our assembly, including our Poem, 'Our Octopus'. We submitted our entry into the 2025 Poetry Basket Competition ran by Tameside.

Our octopus lives in the sea,

He is not like me.

Our octopus has eight legs,

And he does not eat yummy eggs.

Our octopus has lots of spots,

Which we made with big and small dots.

Our octopus can’t you see,

Is blue, green and funny!

Our octopus lives in the sea,

He is not like me.

Our octopus has eight legs,

And he does not eat yummy eggs.

Our octopus has lots of spots,

Which we made with big and small dots.

Our octopus can’t you see,

Is blue, green and funny!