Blog Archives

In The Jungle, The Mighty Jungle...

3/26/2016

Kindergarten students are just finishing up a unit exploring wet-on-wet watercolor; a technique that creates effective looking skies.

After reading about the French artist Henri Rousseau, famous for his imaginary jungle paintings, as well as watching the Art with Mati and Dada episode on Rousseau, students practiced drawing the flora and fauna found in jungle habitats. They then drew their jungle, traced it with a permanent marker, erased the pencil lines, and colored everything except the sky with crayons.

To create the wet-on-wet watercolor effect, they "painted" clean water on their paper, and only then added the watercolor paint. The effect creates a beautiful sunset effect in their lush jungles. As we finished our work a little bit early, students also enjoyed comparing their jungles to the jungle scenes in the Walt Disney classic The Jungle Book.

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Monster Madness!

3/25/2016

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Early Explorers explored the wonderful world of monsters this week!

We started by reading When A Monster is Born by Sean Taylor and Nick Sharratt and then learned how to turn a simple pinch pot into the gaping mouth of a monster using Play Dough. We practiced making eyes by rolling little balls, a long tongue by rolling a worm and then flattening it, and then used ceramic tools to cut out triangle shapes for teeth. After the break, we'll do this again with real clay and fire and glaze our very own monsters! Some of the children were so excited, they even made monster drawings!

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Musical Bears & Magic Hats

3/12/2016

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Today was a special day for my youngest students! The two Early Explorer (pre-school) classes have Music and Art back-to-back on Fridays and today, my colleague Alicia and I collaborated on a project involving our student's parents.

The students made a special invitation for their parents, inviting them to participate in both the Music and Art classes today. After attending the Music class, the students and their parents came to Art class, where the students taught their parents how to make a Magic Hat.

After I read the book The Magic Hat by Mem Fox to the whole group, students took their parents to their table and showed them show to cut a straight line on the pencil mark, how to use a pencil to make curls, and how to fold paper into zig-zags. All these skills were combined to create a wonderful Magic Hat!

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Student Led Conferences

3/11/2016

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Student Led Conferences, in which students demonstrate their learning to their parents, are two-fold in the Lower Primary Art Room.

During the last Art class before the Conferences, students are teamed with a partner for some role-playing. One partner pretends to be the parent and knows nothing about the art project and the other is the student who has to teach them the entire process. During this, students gain confidence, learn how to communicate an idea effectively, and embed their art understanding further.

During the Student Led Conference, students sit down with their parent and teach them an Art skill. The below photo shows Kindergarten students teaching their parents the Wet-on-Wet watercolor technique of painting. Having already made a project in Art class with this technique, and having practiced with a partner, they are confident of their learning and are able to communicate their ideas effectively.

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Cubist Faces, Rolling Dice

3/9/2016

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After Grade 3 completed their more traditional portrait of a sitting model, we had some fun with portraiture. They read the book Getting to Know the Worlds Greatest Artists: Picasso by Mike Venezia, in which they learned about Cubism and saw examples of Cubist portraits.

Next, we designed our own version of the game Roll-A-Picasso, in which the features of a Cubist face are randomly chosen by the roll of a dice.

First, each of my four tables was assigned a facial feature (face shape, eye, nose, and mouth). Next each student drew 2 Cubist features for their table.

As there are 4-5 children on each table, each child had a drawing included on the Roll-A-Picasso chart. The Table Monitor then chose from the remaining drawings to get the necessary six (as there are six sides to a dice).

Each table put their six drawings on the Roll-A-Picasso chart.

Lastly, each student took turns rolling the dice four times. The first roll determined which face shape to draw, the second roll determined the eye shape, etc etc. Then they used the chart to compose their Cubist--now quite Surreal!--portrait!

Some works in progress....

The kids absolutely loved it! They loved the action involved, the game element to rolling the dice, and the surprise element, too.

I loved the collaborative aspect to the creative process, the kids taking ownership of designing their own games, and learning a new technique to encourage creative thinking.

This was my first time teaching this lesson and I think it's a great template for other lessons, especially with Lower Primary kids. Can't wait to use it again!

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It Takes A Village....or A City!

3/5/2016

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As part of a unit exploring different types of communities, Grade 1 students have almost finished making their own whole-class city.

Students started off by studying real maps and noting that the different colors on the map indicate different features in the city. They then created their own fantasy map, voted on their favorite, and drew their four favorites on a large roll of paper. All the cities had to be connected by roads and waterways, and after painting the giant map, the students designed buildings, cars, and people to populate their city.

These new cities are almost ready for display in the school library! Once they're been installed, I'll update the post new photos.

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Artist and Model

3/5/2016

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Grade 3 students practiced their observational skills in a recent portrait project. Last year, the students created a Self-Portrait. This year, after learning about the proportions of the human head and face, they drew a portrait of a classmate. They are still in the process of adding finishing touches using chalk pastels, and when completed, I will update the blog post.