Wrapping it Up!

Where has the time gone!!! As I pack boxes for the big move, art goes on... What's been on tap? Sketching our neighborhood and our school for grades 1-3... our powers of observation are sharpened and our drawing skills refined:

A fourth grade class helped with cleanup (art room style) before drawing and shading bonsai trees. 

Fifth graders are working on using the vanishing point to show perspective Renaissance style. A middle school challenge as we get ready to move on!

And most of our students had a chance to add their farewell messages and grafitti to our art room walls before demolition takes place this summer!

Thanks to those parents who were able to find the precious time to help out in the art room this school year! You made my life more sane and gave your children a wonderful gift!!!

Hoping everyone has a great summer filled with visually rich experiences!!!

COLOR is COOL! ... and WARM:)

First graders spent some time last month playing with color... mixing secondaries and tertiaries from primaries and slicing the color wheel in half as we learned about warm (fire! hot lava!) and cool (blue water, cool green grass) colors.

Van Gogh's "Wheat Fields" was our inspiration piece for a landscape painting as we traveled to color stations dab, dab, dabbing like Mr Van Gogh, separating our warms and cools at the horizon line.

Third Graders Have Gone Goth (ic) !

Crumple up our art? For the sake of stone texture that is just what we did after we finished drawing our Gothic style buildings… one of many lessons in our unit on Washington DC architecture! A fun interactive game we tried on stone arches and buttresses can be found at PBSLearningMedia !

 Draw with sharpies & colored pencils

 Crumple

Soak in paint water and unfold carefully

Lay flat to dry before ironing

Next week the architects designing our school will come talk to us about the process architects go through to design a building like Lafayette! After that, we will work in groups to create our own recycled material model for a new building in Washington D.C. We'll see where our imaginations and the power of teamwork take us!!!

Rock Me Lafayette

The Lafayette Auction Cometh! The 4th graders are exploring Gilbert du Motier's Marquis de Lafayette rocker style as inspired by our auction poster designers. 

Gilbert du Motier

...and the rocker version

And Lafayette students take the challenge... works in progress:

Make-up and a "do"?

St. Pepper's here we come...

All of these creative masterpieces will be on display at the March 28th auction... not to be missed!!!

Ready, Set, Stitch!

The fifth grade quilt is underway after over a month of exploring the Underground Railroad coded message quilts through a digital quilt design (thought to be a myth but such a cool idea!) now on display throughout the Lafayette building. We also looked at quilts from before and during the Civil War and explored the stories behind their creation.

We spent 2 class periods hand stitching pieces of a North Star pattern for our annual 5th grade quilt that we will sell to raise money for Lafayette at the auction in March. Just today we began working on the machines during open art! Look how far we've come already! Excitement abounds and the momentum is palpable!!!

Sharing Our Art With Those Less Fortunate!

What can top creating art? Creating art for others… especially those who need our care! 

A special thanks to first grade parent Regina Davis who came into the art room during my time with Ms. Howard's class to read a touching book about a homeless woman titled "The Lady in the Box" … a wonderful story by Ann McGovern about how a young brother and a sister befriend a homeless woman and how it enriches their lives. 

The illustrations were full of gorgeous visual texture… a concept our first graders have been exploring this winter. After reading this story, three classes of our first graders created cards for Miriam's Kitchen and Ms. Davis delivered them for us before the holidays. The snow was created with sponges in visual texture and then clothing and other details were added the following week with tactile texture (texture you can touch!) So charming!!!

Ms. Davis passed on a warm thanks:

"Just wanted to share a picture of one of the case managers and guests of Miriam's Kitchen. The Executive Director said she couldn't even begin to tell me how much the guests loved the holiday cards, and one of the guests saw the bag of cards and wanted his early so many others followed suit. She also said the guests thought the cards and their messages were incredibly sweet and that the personal touches meant the world to them.   Thanks again for the opportunity to share this project with the students."

This week our third graders are creating more cards for Miriam's kitchen using textured papers they created last week using various techniques including scraping and stamping… more to come soon! Creating art to share with others is truly a privilege for those of us who are so privileged!

Still Recovering From a Crafty Month!

December is delightfully overwhelming in so many ways… and having an art room covered in happy 3rd grade weavers everyday at open art is one thing that makes it special! 

More challenging is the loading and unloading of several hundred pieces of pottery, each of which have to be fired twice… once for bisque and the second time with glaze!

Whew!!!