Talking Pictures for Children 

Talking Pictures is an online resource for children and their adults based on artwork from the Crawford Art Gallery Collection. We will share creative prompts for happy talk and play every Wednesday.

About the artwork

This painting is by Pauline Bewick and it shows a family in County Wicklow. The family are standing in their yard with trees framing their small cottage. Can you see the mountains in the background? These mountains make the painting seem very deep, like the land goes on for a long time behind this family’s home. Can you find the animals in the yard?

The artist Pauline Bewick spent a lot of her childhood moving around between Ireland, Wales and England with her mother and her sister. Her family lived in caravans, a houseboat, a railway carriage and a workman's hut while she was growing up.

A party of people

What do you call a group of people? It could be your family, your class at school or the GAA team you play for. These are all ‘collective nouns’ - different names for groups of more than one human. Your squad, your tribe, your band.

And what if you are talking about more than one cow? A farmer has a herd of cattle or a gaggle of geese. Every animal has a collective noun for its group - and there are some strange ones out there! See if you can match up these animals to their collective nouns.

Put your finger down on one of the pieces and draw around the tip.

Drawing our family troupes

Who do you have in your family bunch?

Pick up some paper and pencils and we will follow Pauline Bewick’s example and draw our own clan.

• Decorate each character with their favourite outfits and anything else you want to add.
• Put your finger down on one of the pieces and draw around the tip.
• Now you need to think of your very own unique collective noun for your family!

This is a charming of Chopras.

We will use a selection of small rectangles of paper - I cut these from scraps.

Then add a long rectangle for the body and rectangles for the arms and legs.

You can download an Irish language pdf version of this article here.

Talking Pictures: 'Family' was devised by Annie Forrester

Please share:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter