International Dot Day

Welcome to the 2015-2016 school year! Things have been very busy in art so far this year, our K-5 students have been creating lots of thoughtful, beautiful and exciting works of art! To kick off the year we celebrated International Dot Day back on September 15! International Dot Day is inspired by Peter H. Reynold's book, The Dot and is all about persevering, making our mark, and being creative! These are all skills we will use thorough out the year in the art room and was a great way to jump right back into all of the excitement of making art together. All of the classes read the book, The Dot together then discussed the story before going onto work with an assortment of materials to make their own marks!

We also listed to the song version of the story as we painted, printed, collaged and more! 

Different classes explored making dots with different materials to make their dots, the 5th grade explored with some mono printing, first they painted a dot on tin foil then placed paper on top of it and pressed to transfer the image onto paper.

Some classes used water colors and others made collages! 

First Grade Matisse

The first grade students have been learning about the artist Henri Matisse. He was born on December 31, 1869 and lived to be 85 years old. He grew up in northern France and as an adult he lived in Paris and was a lawyer. Until one day he became very ill with appendicitis and had to have surgery. When he was recovering in the hospital his mother bought him a paint set and he fell in love with making art! He is most famous for working with very very bright colors and was often referred to as a "Wild Beast". As he became older he started to "draw with scissors" making colorful collages using lots of organic shapes inspired by jazz music.

This video of Matisse was found here. 

After viewing this video and discussing the process Matisse was using to make his collages the students worked independently to cut out many organic shapes. They then worked together to make a large mural for the hallway with all three first grade classes and then they worked on their own individual ones. 

                            

Exploring Color

The art room has transformed into a color mixing extravaganza! For the next month the first grade will be exploring color mixing at different centers; all of which encourage the students to work with the primary colors to create new colors. Throughout this process students will make several mini- projects and will be creating painted paper to use for several future collage projects. In addition to their exploration we will be reading books about colors and listening to songs about color! Please be sure to ask them about their observations.

Center 1

Here students work with light boxes and translucent color tiles to create new colors. 

Center 2

At this center students are working with tissue paper and glue to create collages that have overlapping red, yellow and blue shapes. They are trying to create new colors and observing the different combinations.

Center 3 

At this center,students work with ink pads and pencil erasers to stamp and mix colors. 

Center 4

 At this center students from each class will work with two primary colors to make a secondary color and paint paper that we will be using for collages in the near future.

Center 5

At this center students are working with iPads and play-dough made from different primary colors to demonstrate color mixing. 

As I mentioned above we are also looking at a number of books about color including Mouse Paint, Mix It Up, Monsters Love Colors, The mixed up Chameleon, White Rabbit's Color Book,  Color Dance and many more! 

We have also been enjoying this song as we work