January has brought holiday greetings, the end of a restful winter break, a NEW YEAR, and even a little snow. Personally, I wish there was a bit more snow, as it elicits endless ambience and inspiration for our little artists at Memorial School! Even without all of the white fluffy stuff, we have been very busy creating, inspiring, and constructing our own masterpieces. Below are the classroom expectations from this past month in each grade level.
Prek:Students in preschool have spent the month of January exploring CLAY! We have been busy learning how to shape clay into a ball and into a slab. We then took the balls of clay and turned them into our own handmade beads, which we are in the process of painting. We then made our slab of clay (a flat, even clay pancake) and poked holes into the slab. We also took all sorts of neat tools to create pressed texture into our slabs. The holes are so that we can hang our handmade beads onto the slab, creating our very own hanging mobile/windchime! We are learning how to thread beads onto wire and string. Lastly, we learned the process of clay, from finding it in the earth, to shaping it, to drying it, then firing it in the Kiln, and then finally painting it. We will complete our windchime mobiles soon!
Kindergarten: We have been very busy in Kindergarten learning all about CLAY! We learned the origins of clay, and compared it to playdough or modeling clay (clay we often have at home). We explored shaping clay in a variety of ways, and students demonstrated their skills and shared them with each other. We discovered that we can shape clay into a “COIL”, also known as a worm/hotdog/snake shaped cylinder of clay. We noticed that if we use our hands differently, we can shape clay into a “BALL”, or a sphere of clay. We then explored flattening clay, using our hands again, in a different way, to create a “SLAB” of clay. But the last way we learned how to form clay was to construct a “PINCH POT”. This was the more complex formation of clay and we had to use our hands together, pinching and rolling and rotating the clay to create a cup/bowl form. When students learned all of the clay forming techniques, we challenged ourselves to create something out of clay while COMBINING those techniques together to make either a SCULPTURE or a functional piece of pottery. We discussed what a Potter is, and what ceramics we may find in our homes. We can’t wait for the Kiln to fire our pottery and then we will get to LEARN ABOUT GLAZE!!!!!
1st Grade: Students in first grade are learning how to construct a SCULPTURE using all two-dimensional materials. How do you take something that is FLAT, and transform it into something that is 3D?! Students are taking paper, cutting, folding, rolling, bending, overlapping, and creating tabs in order to help their flat papers transform! We are creating ABSTRACT ART and are learning how to be spontaneous, unique, and surprising, as all abstract art is!
Also, first grade students FILLED THEIR CHEETAH PRIDE TRACKER in the art room with over 100 cheetah tickets, and have received a whole class reward! We chose free art in several classes, and other classes had a digital art day! We had the best time celebrating all of the cheetah pride I have seen during art classes so far this year!
2nd Grade: We have spent this past month learning all about PRINTMAKING! Students have learned how to carve into styrofoam, in order to create a printmaking tool of their own. We are now using brayers, ink and lots of paper in order to achieve the best quality prints that we can. We are judging our own work and making adjustments in the process, in order to make the highest quality prints possible. We are learning about famous artist Andy Warhol, who is well known for his screen printing works of art. We also have discussed and observed where printmaking exists in our own lives, and why it is such an important technology and art! In order to create our own printmaking tool, we learned about a new family of shapes, called “organic” shapes, and how fun it is to create them. We then overlapped them and created a wiggly, wobbly, and unique design of Abstract art! We can’t wait to finish our printmaking projects and share our hard work!
3rd Grade:
Third grade students are hard at work, using the Choice Art model in art class. Students continue to impress and amaze me with their authenticity, motivation to achieve, and high quality works of art that they strive to create. Students work hard to learn and grow together. When there is a challenge, students know to “ask 3 before me” and we are working hard to create an atmosphere where we aren’t worried to try things on our own and see what happens. Being a good problem solver is a very important quality to have as an artist, and each art class, the students solve so many problems in order to master all of the different art processes!
