Still Life Drawings

 Ms. Cafferty and Mr. Menz's classes have been working on still life drawings. We began the project by carefully observing the flower arrangements and noticing as many details as possible. Students then sketched the flowers using pencils--making sure to include all those wonderful details. The following week, students checked their work to see if they had created "balanced compositions." Some children decided to add other details in their works to add visual interest and balance to their artwork. Then, they traced their pencil lines with black glue to create a bold, slightly 3D effect. Today, the children began coloring in their works using oil pastels. As a lesson launch we had watched a time lapse video of a professional artist using oil pastels to draw a pear. We observed some techniques she used and then tried them in our own works. Below are a few time lapse videos taken of students working. Enjoy!

Free Lantern-Making Workshop for the River of Light Lantern Parade

On Saturday November 21st, 2015 Smilie Memorial School (2712 Theodore Roosevelt Hwy, Bolton, VT) will be hosting a special one-day lantern-making workshop in preparation for Waterbury’s River of Light Community Lantern Procession which will be taking place on Saturday December 5th in Waterbury VT.

Workshop:

Date: Saturday November 21st 2015
Place: Smilie Memorial School
Time: 10am-3pm to include an hour break for lunch

– Workshop is free to attend
– All tools and materials will be provided. If you have a pair of hand-held
 pruning shears, please bring them along, you’ll find it useful to have a 
pair of your own.
– Children under the age of 8 must be accompanied by an adult. This 
activity is not suitable for children under 6.
– There will be a limit of 20 participants.
– Donations will be welcome.
– For more information or to register please contact Gowri Savoor at info@gowrisavoor.com or visit https://ariveroflightinwaterbury.wordpress.com/

Community Paper!!

All students at Smilie made large sheets of community paper in art class today. This is paper made by our school community, for our school community. Ms. Cafferty and Mr. Menz's classes both did bubble printing. Ms. Thompson's class did a crayon resist with watercolor and Ms. Cole's class used bleeding tissue paper. All the papers have turned out beautifully! I am in the process of cutting these large paper down to sketch-book size so that the kids can go "shopping" in art next week for a lovely sketch book cover. 

Smilie Reads!!

All students have been hard at work on our Smilie Reads t-shirts. I never knew Einstein had so many awesome hair styles!

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.

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!

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.