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!

Third Grade

Third Grade just started a picture of their rain forest animal this week. So far, they are looking great! I will update more when they are closer to being done. These will also be posted to artsonia. We are working on drawing lighter with our pencil so it is easier to erase, taking up at least half of the paper with our animal, and drawing our animals from a photograph. I can't wait to see how these turn out.

Third Grade Artsonia Upload

Third grade uploaded to artsonia again today. Everyone that was here got their self-portrait uploaded and some even got their stained glass doves uploaded too. They are looking great! Students are getting much faster doing the upload and the pictures are starting to look a little better too! Here is the link:


http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=145635

Remember that you can buy merchandise with your students' artwork on it and some of the money comes right back to the art department.

Third Grade Leaf Collage

Third grade has been inspired by our current season the past couple of weeks. We have been working on a tissue paper collage. These will be the projects we use for our next artsonia upload, hopefully up and running next Friday. These projects have turned out really nice! Here are some examples:

3A

      Morgan

      Maggie

      Mia

      Blake

3B

      Caroline

      Elle

      Lauren

      Charlie

Art Room Update 10/10

There won't be many pictures this week because almost every class is in the middle of a project. Here is what students have been working on this week:

Kindergarten just started doing self portraits. They will finish these next week and also do a drawing of their whole body.

First Grade finished their scarecrows and are starting their self-portraits today.

Second Grade started self-portraits. They should be able to finish them next week.

Third Grade started a collage project. I am really excited to see these when they are finished. They will be our next artsonia upload.

Fourth Grade is finishing up their contour resist projects and will finish a silhouette project this week or next.

Fifth grade didn't have art this week, so they will be finishing up their Jim Dine heart project next week. These should turn out to look  very good.

Sixth grade has one more class period to work on their cityscape, then we are starting a new project.

Seventh is finishing up their "yellow line" project.

Eighth grade is finishing up their typography letter contrast assignment. I think these are going to end up looking really cool as well.

Third Grade

Third grade has been learning about 3D shapes and using them in their artwork, so this week we decided to make actual 3D shapes. The students colored in patterns on a piece of paper then cut the shapes out to assemble them into cubes, triangular prisms, rectangular prisms, and pyramids. We tried to make a cylinder, but it didn't work out as well. Most students did very well with this. It was a more difficult project but every student did try and many of them turned out really cool. These projects will not be on artsonia, but here are pictures of all of them together. 

SURPRISE! Third Grade Uploaded TODAY

I had a chance to get the iPads in my hands today so we went ahead and piloted the program TODAY! Every third grade student currently has their artwork exhibited on www.artsonia.com. You can view this if you go to the website (www.artsonia.com) and enter St. Robert Bellarmine in either the search box at the top OR the school search box. There are 3 St. Robert Bellarmine on the list, but mine does say Omaha, NE next to it. Once you have chosen the school, scroll down to the school gallery and click on the "Spacescapes" exhibit. Here you will be able to see all of the third grader's artwork. Next week, I will be sending slips home with the student's access key so parents can register their students which allow people to comment on the artwork or buy items from the "gift shop". I am so excited that this worked out for students and I can't wait to hopefully get started with more classes!

Exciting News For Third Grade!!

I have began using a website called Artsonia to display my third graders artwork. This website is really great. I put in my rosters and it generates a username for each student (so we don't have to worry about their last names being on the internet). The reason I do the blog is to showcase some student artwork and let parents know what is going on in the room, but unfortunately I don't have time to photograph all 550 pieces of artwork each week. Third grade is my test group. We are going to be using a set of iPads in our classroom in the next few weeks. I will teach them how to properly take their own photographs and upload them to Artsonia. Parents, or anyone for that matter (grandparents, aunts, uncles) will be able to go to the Artsonia website (www.artsonia.com) and search "St. Robert Bellarmine" in the search box. When you click on our school, our "Exhibits" come up and you can find your student's artwork. Right now, there are only the pictures that I already had from third grade, but next Friday every student will have a piece of artwork up. When you click on the picture, there is also a way to buy items with that artwork on it (coffee mugs, t shirts, postcards) and 20% of the  money from those purchases come right back to St. Roberts.

My ultimate goal is to be able to have a classroom set of 8 iPads so every class can upload their photos to Artsonia weekly, or even daily. This would allow each of my 550 students to have a online "exhibit" of their artwork all together.

More will be posted on this subject later, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up!

Don't see your student's project?

Some classes aren't far enough on their projects to post pictures yet. Here are projects that you will see pictures of in the near future. 

2A and 2B should be able to finish their shape robots in class today. I will post pictures tonight or tomorrow. 

3A and 3B will hopefully finish their planets by Thursday, but may take until Friday. Pictures will be posted Friday. 

5A and 5B took their texture names home to work on as homework. They are due tomorrow and pictures will be posted by Wednesday or Thursday. 

7th and 8th graders are starting new projects this week (7A 8A) and next (7B and 8B). I will post pictures of their work as they complete it. 

KA and KB should be finishing their shape work soon and I will be able to post pictures by next Monday. 

Updates for the week 9/16-9/20

Unfortunately, I will be out of the building tomorrow so I will not get a chance to update the blog as usual with pictures. I will, however, let you all know what each class worked on this week and will post pictures on Monday!

Kindergarten-KA did the pattern strips project that KB did last week, then made their cows.
KB started learning about shapes and did some coloring pages to help them identify different shapes.

First grade-Both classes started a project decorating an owl with patterns. We read the books "Good-night, Owl!" by Pat Hutchins and "Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen.

Second Grade-We finished our foil shape projects, then began a drawing of a robot using the shapes we learned about.

Third Grade-We learn about the planets in our solar system and practice using oil pastels to make a circle appear 3D with value. We also started working on an "outer space landscape" which includes the sun, all 8 planets, and some extras.

Fourth Grade-We finished our "Follow the Line Through the House" Project, then learned more about contour line, working on a drawing of our shoe.

Fifth Grade-We finished our texture names (many took these home as homework-due next Tuesday!) and started a new project using line to create a cityscape.

Sixth Grade-We have continued to work on our one point perspective names-they are looking great!

Seventh Grade-We learned about contour lines and practiced blind contour line drawing like last week's class.

Eighth Grade-We worked on value scales.

I will get pictures up Monday!

Third Grade This Week

Third grade is learning about the 5 basic shapes this week in art. They have been working on drawing spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones, and pyramids. Next week, we will start incorporating 3D objects into our artwork. I will post pictures of our practice next week.

Raise Your Hand if You're Excited for Art

For K-5 students, their first project with me was to trace their hand and draw at least three things they are excited to do in art this year. They did these in their "class colors" I use in the art room. K-peach, 1-purple, 2-blue, 3-green, 4-yellow, 5-orange.  I made a bulletin board out of the results. Here are some pictures:

Third Grade Monotypes

The third graders got to do printmaking today and they may have come home and told you it was a crazy day in art! We were on limited time and it was a little rushed, but for the most part they turned out well! The students did wear paint shirts so if they got paint on them I am so sorry! It is only tempera so it is SUPPOSED to be washable. Ask them about the difference between monoprints and monotypes and see if they can tell you! Here are some examples (both classes):

       Will 3A

       Audrey 3A

       Charlie 3B 

     Sarah 3A

       Mia 3A

     Natalie 3B

       Hayden 3A