New Year, New Things Happening in the Art Room

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year! I am so excited to be back for another great year at St. Roberts! There are a few changes in the art room this year so I just wanted to briefly touch on them.

GRADING! Grades 4-8 will have a slightly different grading process this year. Instead of ONLY being graded on behavior, students will also be graded on each art project. BE NOT AFRAID. Grades will be based on a list of requirements, not based on talent. As long as students follow directions and complete their project on time, they will do fine.

FIRST FIVE. Students in grades 2-4 will be participating in an opening activity each day called First Five. When they come into the art room, there will be an activity on the smart board for students to quietly complete. It could be anything from writing down thoughts on a piece of artwork to a quick drawing of something. Before moving on to our lesson or project work time, we will discuss the first five as a class.

ARTSONIA. Artsonia.com is a website where students from all over the world create online art galleries. Last year, my third grade students (now fourth grade), used artsonia to upload four or five pieces of artwork.Their families could go online and see their artwork and even had the chance to purchase merchandise that featured their student's artwork. This year, ALL students K-8 have been designated an artsonia account. Every project completed in class will be uploaded to artsonia. Keep an eye out!

BLOG. I will still update the blog as regularly as possible, but I will not be uploading images of student artwork. Because we have artsonia, I will direct your attention to student artwork often via that site.

And last but DEFINITELY not least,

IPADS!! The art room has been given 8 iPads from Home and School. We will be using the iPads for art history and artist research, group projects, art app exploration, and artsonia uploads. I am so excited to be able to use these with all grade levels!

First Grade Sunflowers

With the weather taking a cold turn this week, I decided to do a project with the first graders that would remind us of what we will see when the flowers begin to bloom in 4-6 months (who knows, we do live in Nebraska). We talked about the artist Vincent van Gogh, who is famous for painting Starry Night. I told the students a little about his life, and we looked at another one of his paintings, Sunflowers. We were inspired by this painting, and used oil pastels to draw and color our own unique sunflower. I am hoping to put these drawings on display somewhere in the school, to keep our spirits up as we try to survive December!

1A

  Grace

     Lucy

    Chloe

   Alex

  Jack

    Ryan

Audrey

  Rylan

    Joe

1B

  Izzy

  Titan

   Cece

     Faith

     Malia

    Sophie

    Carson

  Matthew 

   Pete

First Grade Baby Chicks

First graders learned a song over the last couple of weeks that taught them the order of the colors in the rainbow. We drew circles, coloring them in rainbow order, then made them into baby chicks. These are currently on display in the art room.

First Grade

Here are some examples of some of the dancing giraffes our first graders drew this week!

1A

   Betsy

      Jack V.

      Jack S.

    Audrey

1B

    Cailin

     Izzy

      Claire

Self Portraits Galore!!

Eventually, all classes K-5 will complete a self-portrait. This week K-2 finished theirs. They all turned out pretty good, and EVERYONE improved from their "pre-instruction" drawing of their face. Here are some examples from KA, KB, 1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B.

KA

      Emily

     Paxton

      Maggie

       Maura

KB

    Mia

       Sophie

      Natalie

     Anna

1A

     Carson

      Dylan

      Sami

     Ryan

1B 

     Emma

      Charlie

     Avery

      Claire

2A

      Brian

     Katie

      Lawson

      Michael

2B

      Michael

      Hannah

     Riley

     Jacob