until winter break, that is!
The excitement for snow and holidays and all things winter break is building, but your kids are still hard at work churning out lots of unique and beautiful art! A brief synopsis on December art happenings:
Kindergarten: They're multi-tasking! After checking out various abstract artists who make use of shapes in their work, our youngest artists created their own abstract-expressionist paintings and learned all about how the wax in crayons resists the water in paint. These are still in progress, but this week we're taking a break to be potters! Ask your Kindergartner how he or she made a pinch-pot using clay.
First graders learned all about American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his massive, eye-catching sculptures! They learned how scale is used in art and how we can use the context of other objects in a picture to tell how big something is. Next, they used special gel markers and crayons to draw something that is usually small, but they made it big on their paper and showed the scale by including something next to it (i.e. giant strawberry, tiny building). Early finishers collaborated with other first grade classes to work on HUGE drawings that will hang in the hall next to their masterpieces. They learned a lot about teamwork with this experience!
Second grade has been travelling to Ancient Egypt, learning specifically about the ways ancient Egyptians faced their fears. Ask your second grader why they drew a hippopotamus for this project! They wrote their own worries or fears inside their hippo, covered them up so that they're still a secret, and then used a sgraffito technique to carve designs into their hippos. Finally, they created their own stamps from styrofoam and printed patterns for the border of their drawings using gold ink.
Third grade is wrapping up their Cubist Picasso-inspired still life paintings, and they look amazing! Ask your third-grader what they can tell you about their work when they bring it home. We are moving into a new lesson involving personal Mandalas, where we will explore the Tibetan culture where they originated and then see how other cultures have adapted this art form and made it their own. The students have been brainstorming symbols to represent themselves in their own personal Mandalas!
Fourth graders finished up their assemblage projects- a HUGE thank you to all who contributed supplies. The students all showed great imagination and ingenuity for this project- even though they had access to similar materials, no two boxes look even remotely the same. I spray-painted all 120 of them silver (I had a bit of help from my boyfriend...or a lot of help!) and they are awesome! Ask your fourth grader how his or her box changed through the process of making it, and how it was different from other students' projects in the class.
Fifth graders were very successful with their clay funny faces, using a pinch pot base and then adding features using coils, incising, and applique. Some made animals, some made monsters, and some made crazy unidentifiable creatures! The next step is painting and embellishing the projects, while we also take some time to learn about a culture that made clay jugs with faces long before we even had art classes. Ask your fifth grader how we built on their previous knowledge of African slaves in America in the late 1800's, learning that some slaves were forced to work in potteries, and it is believed that they created "face jugs" as a way to retain some of their own culture and pass down traditions. We talked about a few reasons they may have made such jugs- but we know that no one can be sure. Check out this video that we watched part of in class if you'd like to see more:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1918318256/
Thanks so much for reading, stay warm! :)
Kindergarten: They're multi-tasking! After checking out various abstract artists who make use of shapes in their work, our youngest artists created their own abstract-expressionist paintings and learned all about how the wax in crayons resists the water in paint. These are still in progress, but this week we're taking a break to be potters! Ask your Kindergartner how he or she made a pinch-pot using clay.
First graders learned all about American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his massive, eye-catching sculptures! They learned how scale is used in art and how we can use the context of other objects in a picture to tell how big something is. Next, they used special gel markers and crayons to draw something that is usually small, but they made it big on their paper and showed the scale by including something next to it (i.e. giant strawberry, tiny building). Early finishers collaborated with other first grade classes to work on HUGE drawings that will hang in the hall next to their masterpieces. They learned a lot about teamwork with this experience!
Second grade has been travelling to Ancient Egypt, learning specifically about the ways ancient Egyptians faced their fears. Ask your second grader why they drew a hippopotamus for this project! They wrote their own worries or fears inside their hippo, covered them up so that they're still a secret, and then used a sgraffito technique to carve designs into their hippos. Finally, they created their own stamps from styrofoam and printed patterns for the border of their drawings using gold ink.
Third grade is wrapping up their Cubist Picasso-inspired still life paintings, and they look amazing! Ask your third-grader what they can tell you about their work when they bring it home. We are moving into a new lesson involving personal Mandalas, where we will explore the Tibetan culture where they originated and then see how other cultures have adapted this art form and made it their own. The students have been brainstorming symbols to represent themselves in their own personal Mandalas!
Fourth graders finished up their assemblage projects- a HUGE thank you to all who contributed supplies. The students all showed great imagination and ingenuity for this project- even though they had access to similar materials, no two boxes look even remotely the same. I spray-painted all 120 of them silver (I had a bit of help from my boyfriend...or a lot of help!) and they are awesome! Ask your fourth grader how his or her box changed through the process of making it, and how it was different from other students' projects in the class.
Fifth graders were very successful with their clay funny faces, using a pinch pot base and then adding features using coils, incising, and applique. Some made animals, some made monsters, and some made crazy unidentifiable creatures! The next step is painting and embellishing the projects, while we also take some time to learn about a culture that made clay jugs with faces long before we even had art classes. Ask your fifth grader how we built on their previous knowledge of African slaves in America in the late 1800's, learning that some slaves were forced to work in potteries, and it is believed that they created "face jugs" as a way to retain some of their own culture and pass down traditions. We talked about a few reasons they may have made such jugs- but we know that no one can be sure. Check out this video that we watched part of in class if you'd like to see more:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1918318256/
Thanks so much for reading, stay warm! :)