THE CHIHULY – style sculpture that grades 1-5 have contributed to is in the process of completion.  It is approximately 15 hours of my tying skills away from being presented!!!!  It will hang in the windows above the front doors to our school.

Kindergarten art students are in the middle of making their Alphabet Artist Book!  Parents, look for this keepsake to come home with your child by the first week in June!

First graders just finished an interdisciplinary art lesson between art and social studies.  They learned about absolute location in cooperation with architecture in art!  These masterpieces will be hung after spring break.

2nd graders are working on their architecture lesson by creating a cityscape collage.

3rd graders just completed snowman perspective and value paintings, Birds and Birch Trees Collage, and have begun their city scapes – a study in color mixing to create value.

3/4 split class is wrapping up their fairy/troll/gnome/smurf houses.

4th grades are in the midst of their Dream House architecture lesson.  These past 2 weeks were spent on creating the house and adding atmospheric perspective through application of their knowledge of gradual value scale creation.

4/5 split just completed their clay rattles, a group slat book based on the choreo poems they wrote on our DIA field and their bird sculptures and masks.

5th grades have completed their paper mache’ birds, are taking the Elements of Art post test, and beginning their 3D house sculpture (this is what they needed a tissue box for!).

Most students have been learning about perspective through the subject of snowmen!  We haven’t had much snow this year so we have brought in our own!  If you visit Howard, you will see snowmen from the perspective of a worm, a bird and eye-to-eye!

Students in grades 1-5 have created birds!

1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th grades have created 3D birds from clay and paper mache’.

3rd grade is creating 2D cardinals and blue jays with colored pencils and printed birch tree collages.  These show the element of space.  Birds and trees that are close to us are large and bold in color, while the one that are farther are smaller and showing less details.

The 4/5 PBL class went on a field trip to the DIA.  We are working on turning our Noah’s Ark: Genesis inspired group choreo poems into Japanese Slat Books.  The students also created clay rattles to go along with the poem.  We hope to present our creations to the entire school in the near future!

Be sure to check out the student displays in the hallways!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week the 2nd grade created 3D turkeys!  Please enjoy these displayed for your holiday festivities!

Some first grade and kindergarten classes created a variation on a textured turkey!  Please enjoy!

All other students worked on a piece for our Chihuly Installation!

Enjoy your much deserved time off!

Mrs. Thomas

Kindergarteners are continuing to work on their Art Alphabet Books.  Pages for “A”, “H”, “L”, “T” will be created in the next couple of weeks.

Please look in the Main Hall for student masterpieces as influenced by Impressionist Painter Vincent VanGogh, Monet and Seurat.

All grade levels will begin the Architecture Unit.  We will look at architecture of many styles and what the job of an architect is.

Kindergarten – Collage House

1st grade – printmaking

2nd grade – drawing, painting, ink.

3rd grade – Cityscape.  Perspective skyscrapers reinforcing math concepts through application.  Color mixing value – tints and shades.

4th grade – dream houses.  Reinforcing math concepts through application.  Colored Pencil

5th grade – 3D house.  Reinforcing math concepts through application.  Kleenex and other small boxes.  Crayon resist.  Collage.  Unity and contrast.

Of special interest – The water bottle donations!  Thank you to all who have contributed!  Some classes will begin the Chihuly study school-wide this week.  This will be an installation that most students will contribute to as they complete their current art units.

Kindergartners are creating a page for their Art Alphabet Book that will go home at the end of the school year.  We are reading a book about manners called The Monster’s Monster.  We are following up with “M” is for Making a Monster.  Students will be drawing, cutting and gluing circles and rectangles together to create a monster collage.  They will add details with black crayons.

1st graders are working on 3D monsters.  Learning to tear, bend, cut and glue papers together to create a 3D monster.

2nd graders are using a paper pattern, scissors, and glue to form a sphere.  They will then use more paper to create a cylinder for a stem, paper bending and curling techniques for leaves and vines to create a pumpkin from the sphere.  If students have time and desire they will use paper to cut and glue jack-o-lantern features onto their pumpkin.

3rd graders are creating “Witch Feet”.  We are connecting to language arts through the use of homophones and tongue twister.  “Which witch feet would you wish to wash?”  This is a 2D collage and pattern lesson.

4th graders are using a paper pattern, scissors, and glue to form a large sphere.  They will then use more paper to create a cylinder for a stem, paper bending and curling techniques for leaves and vines to create a pumpkin from the sphere.  If students have time and desire they will use paper to cut and glue jack-o-lantern features onto their pumpkin.

5th graders are completing the follow-up writing reflection for the group 3D Witch project and getting back to the completion of their VanGogh Impressionist Sunflower Still Life in tempera.

Next week we will all be finalizing our VanGogh lessons.  Look around the school for our displays.

We will also begin our Dale Chihuly “Glass Installation” for the foyer.  We are in need of empty plastic water bottles!

All students, K-5, will be learning about and creating a work of art inspired by the sunflowers of Impressionist Artist, Vincent VanGogh.

Kindergarten one day painting of a sunflower.

1st grade –  3-4 art classes of painting a sunflower still life with focus on brush strokes.

2nd grade – 3-4 art classes of creating a sunflower relief sculpture.

3rd grade – 3 art classes of creating a sunflower still life using glue and chalk pastels.

4th grade – 6 art classes of creating a 3D sunflower using various paper bending techniques.

5th grade – 6 art classes of painting a sunflower still life in the Impressionist Style.

The students have been working on Pinwheels for Peace for the upcoming Peace Assembly on Monday, September 25 at 2:45 by the Peace Pole.

All art students are learning about Leonardo DaVinci and how to “be the Mona Lisa”.  You may want to ask your student what is so special about Mona Lisa’s eyes and to show you how to “be the Mona Lisa”!

Our first major study in art this year will be of Vincent VanGogh!  Every grade will create a sunflower.  Parents, it would be fabulous to collect your child’s annual sunflower projects to see their growth!  Great to put up at their graduation party!

Things to ask your child about Vincent Van Gogh:

Who is Vincent Van Gogh?

What does he like to paint?

What are you making in art?

This fall we will be recognizing the International Day of Peace by making the Pin Wheels for Peace (1st through 5th grades).  Kindergarten will be creating a peace sign.  We will have a Peace Assembly on Monday, September 22, 2014.

An art studio is a place where people go to create art.  A shared studio (more than one artist using the space) is a space for instruction, creation, collaboration and experimentation in one of the arts.  Welcome to Howard Elementary’s Art Studio blog!