Art Room News

Why your childs specials day changes...

At this time the second semester has just finished and report cards will be coming home in the next couple weeks. The month of January will fly by due to the days off so the days will roll or change when your child has art. Typically you'll hear of a child at another school who always has art on Mondays-- a static schedule---but what we have been using here at Still for the at least 8 years now is called a rolling schedule. Yes it would be more convenient if you knew your child always had art on Monday and PE on Tuesday and Thursdays. But what we have come to discover is especially on Months like this one, January, if your child's art day was on Monday, I wouldn't see those students until the 23rd of January. So we do what we call a rolling schedule, so your child will always have art sometime during their week. They also won't fall behind the other grade level classes on particular projects.

I have also attached my quarterly newsletter which I know some of the teachers handed out when report cards went home. I hope you find the information helpful in ways to increase your child's art vocabulary.

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November News...

Square 1 Art has made its way home. Thank you to all who have placed orders. You will recieve them in time for the holidays!

What else is new-

K has been focusing on texture and working with some new materials. We have worked with some clay...but I can't say any more because its a surprise. We have also had our first art room painting experience. Lots of rules but boy was it fun!

1st grade has been talking about movement and working with 3-d forms. We created a mini flip book and some nutty nuts are about to be roasted.

2nd grade has dove back under the sea to create an underwater environment. We are also working in 3-d and made a "Big Mouth Billy Bass" out of clay. We will start a native american unit tying it into their classroom learning.

3rd graders have been working with leaves. Doing some rubbings to find the actual texture. Carving the rubbings into a foam plate which was used in a printmaking experiment. We will try some other techniques in making prints also.

4th grade has finally finished our Manga inspired cartoons. They have really created some imaginative images that could really be turned into graphic novels. We will be focusing on the rest of the quarter some value drawing techniques.

5th grade has finally finished our eyeballs which are hanging all around our school.

 

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What have we been working on...

Ok so we are 6 weeks into the school year and nothing has come home that your child has worked on in art... Seeing the students only once a week, sometimes our projects, especially for  3/4/5 grades, take a couple of weeks to complete. Then if they are put on display in the halls who knows when they'll make it home. Well here is what we have been doing after we finished up our self-portraits.

5th graders will be finishing up their Square 1 Art project next week. The main theme for the 5th graders for the whole year will be freedom and inspiration. The students were shown a possible S1A project with an under the sea theme or they were given the option to create something on their own. Some of them select images from a drawing book, some selected to take an abstract direction and others I don't know what inspired them. I acted as a guide making suggestions about techniques and spacing.

4th graders, for S1A, have been working on a project that involves their initials in a reflection, then a rotation and finally ending in a Kaliedoscope effect. The end result is a very graphic, as in graphic design, image with our initials almost disappearing.

3rd grade created an image that looks like a bunch of pencils have just been scattered all over the table. We focused on drawing as realistically as possible with some correct overlapping techniques. We just looked at Faith Ringgold's story quilt Tar Beach were inspired to create an image of our self flying over our most favorite place in the world. We will be working on this image for the next 4 weeks.

2nd grade created a sea turtle for their S1A project focusing on learning the differences between horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. The images are beautiful. We then took a look at some optical illusions and tried creating some our self. We will for the next couple of weeks be zooming in on Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on Le Grande Jette. Hopefully figuring out what the point is...

1st grade has been working with the primary and secondary colors creating tie-dye and looking at Mondrian's work. Our next focus will be figuring out the differences between Math shapes(geometric) and Nature shapes(organic).

Kindergarten has been working with different types of lines including roller coaster(curvy), zig-zag, thin, thick, airplane(diagonal), straight and Ms. Duhn's favorite the spiral. Can you figure out which one you can find in the toilet? We have also been working on collage techniques.

A new year!!!!

Welcome to a new school year- This is my 13th year here at Still Elementary and I look forward to teaching all the students, recalling old friends names and meeting new friends.

So what did we do the first day in art? Every class, K-5, has an introduction/review of the classroom procedures and rules. Our first project is a self-portrait that I like to keep. I let the little ones know this is my way of helping me learn who they are and what they look like. It also gives me a basic understanding of what their fine motor skills.

Coming back this year will will be the Square 1 Art project fund-raiser. Unfortunately, the county supplement for materials has been eliminated, but through the support of this fund-raiser, I am able to purchase our classroom consumable supplies. This fund-raiser does not come from PTSA- so they are keeping their promise-all monies raised, all monies raised go directly to the art room.

So what is Square 1 Art(S1A)? With in the next couple of weeks students will be creating curriculum based projects that will be submitted to S1A. They are a local company, founded by a former Cobb County art teacher. They take each piece of student art and can place the image on a vvariety of items such as key chains, ornaments, water bottles which can then be purchased. Every student will receive 20 free stickers of their artwork from S1A. So please do not feel pressured to buy. All items will be home in time to be given for holiday presents. More information will be coming home soon.