As part of the Gr 5/6 Civil War interdisciplinary unit students had fun dressing up to pose as some of the original Peacham settlers during the Civil War. We manipulated the photos in a program called Vintage Scenes. Snowmen at Night by Carolyn Buehner inspired our Gr 1/2 and Kindergarten to practice rendering form in light and shadow. This book offers great visuals when discussing this abstract concept to young artists. We used table lamps to look at light and the shadows it creates on simple round forms. In our paintings we practiced using very small amounts of blue over white paint to suggest those same shadow forms.
Our final paintings using our kits from the Vermont Watercolor Society grant have been completed and students have taken their kits home. They have plenty of paints and paper left to continue working on their own. The following photos show two projects. Our first project focused on Peacham scenes and the second project focused on design.
Children's book author Bruce McMillan generously donated 50 copies of his book The Remarkable Riderless Runaway Tricycle to students at Peacham School. Using the actual tricycle, students were challenged to create a drawing that worked as a narrative, creating a story about a tricycle that travels on an adventure. The model for their drawings was the actual tricycle which visited the school. It was the same one photographed for the book and also for the movie (HERE). Grades 1/2 used concepts of symmetry to complete masks this past October. We looked at designs in nature to recognize symmetry and applied those concepts to our paper masks.
Our kits have finally arrived from the Vermont Watercolor Society and the 3/4 class spent last week exploring their new materials. We used the first class period as free time to test out colors, brushes, paper and (new to most students), kneaded erasers.
Our Pre-K class students have been practicing painting skills with watercolor. We looked at the color wheel to identify which colors are next to each other. Hmmm, how is that like a rainbow? Our rainbow was a falling rainbow over drawings including rain drops, animals, and scribbles.
Grade 5/6 students are building 3-D mask forms using cardboard, paper tubes, newspaper, and cereal boxes. Building basic geometric forms such as a cone, cylinder, rectangle, etc and then shaping the form further they attach these to the cardboard surface of the mask. With each class period students are more comfortable with their new found skills in construction. Follow future blog posts to see our next steps. Art Grant The art department has received a grant from the Vermont Watercolor Society’s Out Reach Program “I CAN PAINT EDUCATION FUND.” This program donates artist grade supplies to public school children between the grades 3 through 12 by classroom on a first com first serve basis. Peacham School will receive 12 kits containing 10 colors of paint, a palette, 4 brushes, a spray bottle, pencil, kneaded eraser and pad of 140 lb paper. Artist grade materials are a joy to work with and I’m sure students will enjoy the privilege of working with these new supplies. Students will keep their kits with the hope they will continue to work further with watercolor painting at home. One group will be the given the kits, learning watercolor techniques, skills, and color theory over a 4-6 week period. Follow our work sessions and progress on this art room blog! Fiber arts this winter included an introduction to stitchery. Students learned to thread a needle, lock the needle in place and tie off the yarn when changing colors. Both boys and girls really enjoy stitchery and its a quiet non-messy medium for the art teacher as well.
The younger grades have been learning about Chinese culture; providing the perfect opportunity to let students work with our bamboo brushes. We practiced sittting up straight with our elbows off the table. This is practiced to enable the artisit's energy to travel up their back to their brain. Brushes were held vertically to use only the tip for fine lines or pressed down for thick lines. We also practiced using our arm and not our wrist to manipulate the brush. Kids were really enthusiatic to work with this new technique and imagine themselves as Chinese artists.
We are lucky to have the Peacham Library host our student art exhibit in their gallery space. We're having an artist reception on Friday, April 10th from 3-5pm. Hope to see you there.
These bold animal prints were created by the 5/6 class using linoleum blocks. They really enjoyed the carving process and were especially respectful of using proper techniques to avoid cutting their fingers. They achieved a variety of nice texture and pattern effects in their backgrounds. We'll use these prints in our spring show at the Peacham library coming up next month.
After our several lessons exploring line Kinders took line to the next level to create shape with line. We used soft balsa sticks which were easy to break but any other medium will work as well.
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile. He also created numerous wire sculptures and an entire play circus out of wire and found objects. Our 5/6 class used Calder's fish mobiles and other wire sculptures as inspiration for their own original wire fish creatures. We used contour line drawings as a template to shape the wire and followed our own design sense to experiment with various line configurations and shapes to complete our mobiles.
Understanding symmetry presents a large learning curve for many young students. Valentine's Day offers a traditional lesson in drawing half of a heart on the folded side of paper to reveal a whole heart when opened. We explored the "power of the fold" as a means to creating 3-dimensional animals from a single piece of paper.
Students used patterns to start and were then encouraged to create their own designs once they understood the concept of drawing only half an animal from the folded side of the paper. We also found ways to attach horns and ears by cutting slits and slots to interlock. Stabiles and mobiles offer a great opportunity to experiment with balance and movement in art making. Third and fourth graders created paper sculptures with an interlocking technique using two pieces of tagboard and then used wire to balance a wire stabile on top. While the construction of the sculpture was fairly straightforward the stabile required finer manipulation. We discussed how the negative space exercise from our previous lesson now was being used as we arranged our shapes to hang from the stabile wires. Some students were taken back when I told them they could not use the glue gun to keep their wires balanced.
They agreed the solid form of the base sculpture complemented the open light feeling created by the suspended shapes. Positive and Negative space worked together to create a balanced stabile. Grades 1/2 have started the year making art that moves. Children love to manipulate materials and are fascinated with art that changes and evolves with movement. We worked with accordian pop out books, a 4 bar paper strip mechanism using paper fasteners, and animated faces. The links below show our animated faces and 4 bar mechanism dragon creatures. movingeyes from Ruth Kaldor on Vimeo. dragon2 from Ruth Kaldor on Vimeo. |
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April 2016
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