Working to a magical theme and with natural materials, walkers on the beach were amazed at staff and children enthusiastically creating a fire-breathing dragon at West Wittering.

Artist Jane Ashley-Brian found it great fun and extremely rewarding to spark the children's imagination. This led to groups designing their own magical gardens, which will be a wonderful stimulus for Years 1 and 2's individual creative writing.

The autumn weather was kind to us, enabling Mrs Hillier to lead a drama activity to end the day - 'Dragon Attack!' Children became snapping crabs and jumping starfish, to name just a few.

The Alton convent School Fashion Show 09 marked the start of new era in the history of the, House based, competitive event. As part of a new Creative Arts Day not only were the girls expected to create and present imaginative fashion designs but also to incorporate their designs within a 5-10 minute multi-media performance combining all the Creative Arts including Drama, Dance, Art and Design and Music.

Each House had to create a range of hats and a fashion show performance inspired by a different painting, with artists ranging from Jackson Pollock to Claude Monet. The results were truly outstanding and all Houses used video, dance and lighting to dramatic effect with St Johns winning 1^st place. Over all it was a stunning demonstration and celebration of the girl's technical and creative abilities. Well done.

The annual exhibition of Prep School art work drew many appreciative comments from teachers, students and present and prospective parents. The quality and variety of work on show was great testament to the children’s creativity and their teachers’ inspiration. Highlights included some Monet inspired collaborative work from Year 1 (Year 6 will be able to compare and contrast this with the original at the Orangerie on Wednesday), a rather more static Maypole than we’re used to seeing at this time of year, and some fine pointilist work from Upper Prep children.

Year 11 had an inspiring visit in March to the Tate Modern in London to visit the ‘Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism' exhibition. They gathered valuable research and ideas for their forthcoming Art exam visiting many other modern collections within the gallery and the Tate Modern bookshops in addition to the exhibition itself. A very enjoyable experience was had by all and the girls also enjoyed their walk to the Tate Modern from Waterloo Station along the South bank as it allowed them many photographic opportunities including the colourful skateboarding area under the concrete structure of the Hayward Gallery covered with vibrant examples of graffiti!

The close of the spring term was marked with the Lower Prep’s Easter Celebration and Bonnet Parade. Classes from Nursery to Year 2 entertained one another with songs, dances and stories celebrating Easter. Children and parents had put much energy and creativity into an amazing array of Easter Bonnets, raising further funds for the Good Shepherd Appeal and making it very difficult to decide the competition winners.

When we looked at our timetable and saw the word Art, we knew it would be different, but didn’t know how it would be. All of Year 6 lined up and headed to the art building, to be met by Mrs Ashley-Brian and Mr Walker. We also saw a large piece of fabric with the outline of a large sun with a pretty weird face. Mrs Ashley-Brian explained to us that some of us would be painting the fabric whilst the rest of us would be doing a drawing with charcoal then we would swap. I did the painting first: we used quite a few colours: blue, yellow, black and white. We soon had filled in most of the face. Then we used charcoal to make our own sun god and we added in some coloured chalk. I used purple.

On Tuesday afternoon we did cookery. We made salsa and it was really cool (well, a little bit spicy maybe). We used tomato, green pepper, red onion, coriander and lemon juice. It looked like a piece of art work because it was very colourful. We served it with corn chips. It was delicious and my whole family loved it.

Kiera, 4A