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!

Kindergarten Families

Kindergartners drew these pictures of their families last week! Do you see yourself somewhere in these pictures?

After finishing the family portraits, we worked on learning how to paint correctly. To practice, we used the primary colors to paint the inside of hands that we drew on our paper.

We also learned about reflections and symmetry this week. Students painted a fall landscape on half of their blue paper then folded it in half so the paint would duplicate. It is meant to look like the trees are reflecting in water. These turned out very cool!

KA

Austin

Paxton

  Nora

Martha

   Kate

    Claire

   Maggie

     Mariah

   Ella

Nathan

  Addison

   Maura

KB

  Mia

     Anna

    Morgan

     Blaise

    Sophie

     Eleanor

  Izzy

 Tommy 

Katherine

     Tara

     Jordan

   Liam

Kindergarten Full Body Self-Portraits

Some examples of the great job the Kindergarten students did on their full body self-portraits the past couple of weeks!

KA

     Martha

     Maggie

     Kate

      Mariah

KB

      Ava

      Blaise

      Will

      Liam

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