Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Kindergarten Five Senses Book

The kindergartners have been hard at work over the last several weeks doing an art project that targeted each of our five senses. We are now compiling all five pieces into a five senses book. Here is what we did for each of our senses...

  • HEARING: We listened to three different songs. During each song, the children drew how they felt the song would look as a piece of artwork. This created a lovely triptych done with crayons.
  • SMELL: We painted using fruit tea bags. We also ground cinnamon sticks and nutmeg on some rough sandpaper to make our play dough scented. (The art room smelled "like cookies.")
  • TOUCH: Using many different materials (papers, fabric, yarn, tin foil, etc.) we felt and described the textures of each. We then, created a touch collage.
  • TASTE: Although we did not eat anything, we used beets as a stamp for our taste piece.
  • SIGHT: We looked at some pictures that trick our eyes by using complementary colors (colors across from each other on the color wheel) and then we created our own tricky pictures using oil pastels. 
The five sense is a part of the kindergarten science curriculum. It has been fun to be able to help the children develop connections between their classroom units of study and their artwork.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Our Community Paper Sketchbooks

We created some wonderful community papers. I like to begin the year with the community paper project because not only do the children get their hands on some real art materials right off the bat, but they are also creating for the school community as a whole. Each class began the process by decorating "community paper" to be used as the cover for the sketch book. Community paper is poster sized paper that the students decorated cooperatively. The classes used differing techniques to add pizazz to the paper. These included paint with scrapers, wet on wet water color with salt, tissue with modge podge, and bleeding tissue paper. I, then, cut each large scale work down to book sized and mixed the beautiful works together. Students were able to "shop" for a sketch book cover from a large selection of unique covers all made by their school peers. Each student has also identified a goal for art this year by illustrating their "hopes and dreams" within the front cover of their sketchbook. Next time you're in school, make sure you check out our awesome sketchbooks!

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Harold and the Purple Crayon

We had a fabulous first art class on Friday! After reading Crockett Johnson's classic "Harold and the Purple Crayon," we talked about what tools Harold used to have such an exciting adventure. We determined that Harold only required two things: his purple crayon and his imagination. The children jumped right in to create their own monochromatic art adventures in the style of Harold. Since we have purple crayons (and many other art materials) as well as vivid imaginations in abundance, I am looking forward to going on many more art adventures with these young artists. Make sure you check out the students' artwork on the bulletin board outside the art room.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Art Schedule
Fridays

8:10-8:55 Cafferty (2/3)
9:00-9:45 Menz (3/4)
9:50-10:35 LeFrancois (1/2)
12:35-1:15 Cole (K)