Youngsters at Tregoze School in Grange Park spent an art day in early December creating large 3D millennium bugs to decorate the computer suite.

Children in Karen Winterburn's class also experimented with Australian aboriginal artforms on her return from a two week exchange in early November visiting primary schools in the Newcastle area of New South Wales. Mrs Winterburn had the chance to spend a school arts day working with aboriginal artists and she passed on what she had learnt.

The Tregoze children designed and decorated a large banner depicting the ancient story of 'Kalpartu, the dreamtime snake,' a spirit snake who lives in rivers and waterholes, and can be seen in the star lit sky. Each pupil also made a bowl, a boomerang or a tool from papier mache and clay, decorated with lizards, crocodiles and abstract designs.

Ryan Collett said he found it quite difficult to do at first. "We had to use dots and dashes like the pictures we saw in a book. But after I tried it a few times, I liked the designs I made."

Hannah Clemo said, "I made a 'coolamon' which is a bowl for carrying food and water. It was very colourful with lots of spirals and zigzag patterns. It was a lot of fun to do."

Two Australian teachers Jill and Peter Campbell visit Tregoze in October before Karen went to Australia. To help her www.swindonlink.com created a special 'mini-web site' so that she could show off Tregoze School to Australian children over the Internet.

Several classes at Charlestown East set up 'e-pals' links with Tregoze, but as the new school year has just started in Australia, there are problems in linking across age groups.

Karen said that having Tregoze on the Internet enhanced her visit as she could show children pictures of the school and the youngsters in her class. "It was really fantastic to be able to see photos of my class from the other side of the world. It showed how new technology can be used to improve children's knowledge and understanding.

"The Australian children really enjoyed 'visiting' my children at Tregoze and parents on both sides of the globe have been impressed by how the web is being used to communicate across the world."