Sixth Grade Observational Drawing

Second Grade Sunflowers

Donations Please!

Christmas Ornaments/Balls from Mrs. Stormes

Exploring various art mediums through stations!

Station Exploring with Kindergarten

Artsonia

Work has been piling up in the art room and thanks to some fabulous fifth and sixth graders that art has now made it way onto Artsonia and the bulletin boards in the hallways!  Check out our Artsonia page and leave some comments for your favorite artists!  Thank you to all my student helpers!

Architecture Station

Students are experimenting with architecture through stations. The architecture station allows students to explore the visual interest of buildings while discovering how to make structures balanced and secure.

Third Grade Name Creatures!

International Dot Day

This year, we celebrated International Dot Day! We made many dots, in many different ways! International Dot Day was inspired by the book, The Dot by Peter Reynolds. The Dot is a fantastic little story with a great message. We used the story as out inspiration to talk about how we can make our mark in the world, new things we can try, and ways to use our art knowledge to make many types of dots. Our dots are on display in the board room at the adminstrationg building and will also be put on display in the halls of Leib Elementary!

Welcome Back!

We are back!  School has started and so has art class.  Introduction to art class letters are going home with students after their first art class.  Please take the time to read the letter.  The letter shares information about our blog (you are here, fantastic!), Artsonia, and my teaching philosophy.  It also reminds you to please, please, please send in an art shirt for your child.  Art is messy and messy is fun!
Please remember that we are focused on the learning process in this art room.  We are learning a variety of techniques, but we are also learning about the artistic process.  We are learning about planning, working through mistakes, and evaluating our own work.  At the beginning of the year, we are focusing on the basics- things like learning proper procedures and reviewing the elements of art. It may be a few weeks until your child brings anything home from art class, especially in the older grade levels.
One of the things we will address at the beginning of the year is mistakes.  We will read Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg and take about mistakes (if you have not read Beautiful Oops, I encourage you to do so, it is a great story for children and adults alike!). Remember art is just as much about the process as the product.  I want the students to learn from the process, not create picture perfect copies of my examples.  We can learn just as much, if not more, from the mistakes we make.  So, always remember in art, it is not a mistake, it is an opportunity.

Street Painting

End of the year SELF-PORTRAITS!

In September/October, we made a self-portrait.  We revisited that lesson again at the end of the May/beginning of June.  Students framed their beginning of school year portrait with their end of school year portrait. Grades 1-6 also filled out a self-reflection about their self-portrait called 2 Stars and a Wish.  The growth many of the students demonstrated was amazing!

Fifth grade critique!

We are learning that part of being an artist is being a critical examiner of our work. We all have successes and areas for improvement!

Make your voice heard- support arts education in our schools!

“The arts are a major area of human cognition, one of the ways in which we know about the world and express our knowledge. Much of what is said in the arts cannot be said in another way. To withhold artistic means of understanding is as much a malpractice as to withhold mathematics… Since schools traditionally develop only linguistic and logical/mathematical skills, they are missing an enormous opportunity to develop the whole child.”
~Dr. Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education www.artworksforkids.org/

Photos from fourth through sixth field day chalk mural!

Recent studio work- busy, busy artists!

Our most recent station to open was Architecture!  Students have been busy making plans and creating structures from their plans.  Architecture is a great way to learn planning and problem solving skills!  Many students are also still working in sculpture and inventor's workshop, as well as drawing.  Students love being able to choose their own media for their design ideas!

Falling for foreshortening!

Fifth grade has been working on self-portraits that display foreshortening! 

I love how imaginative the backgrounds are in these portraits. What would you want to fall in to?

Solar System Mural

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=5f128f25-5ad7-4994-8a1b-10a1790732bf&c=73f34db0-d9e5-11e3-b0b1-d4ae5292c426&ch=73f856c0-d9e5-11e3-b0b1-d4ae5292c426

Please click on the link to look at our feature in the Spring PAEA Newsletter! They have featured our solar system mural. So exciting! Awesome work fourth grade!

6th Grade Artist Reports

Sixth graders have been working on a report of an artist. Students selected an artist to study from a collection of books (thanks Mrs. Kunkle and Mrs. Blackwell for pulling the books for us!). 

Students then filled out a packet of information about their artist, created a portrait of their artist, and did copies of two of their famous works of art. Creating copies of other artists work is a long standing art tradition. Artists learn by carefully examine the art work of others! 

Our final step was to cut out our report and place it on a paper cube. Building the cubes has proved to be a challenge for many of the students, but we learn the most from those challenging tasks! 

The sixth graders are doing a great job with their artist reports. I can't until they are all done and they get to share them with each other!