Bark Paintings

The 4th grade spent some time looking at examples of bark paintings from Australia. Bark painting is an Australian Aboriginal art form, involving painting on the interior of a strip of tree bark. We used cut up paper bags for the bark and just black, white and brown paint as the Aboriginal would. 

Little Pizza Chefs

After watching a cute video story called "Pete's a Pizza" K2 made their own pizzas. 

They look good enough to eat!

Rugs

The 5th grade made more progress with their Navajo rugs.

Gothic Churches and Rose Windows

During Catholic School Week I talked about the architect style of Gothic churches and also Rose Windows with the 7th grade. We are fortunate to have Rose windows in Sacred Heart Church.  They typically have detailed radial designs and are used in Gothic architecture. For our project we used recycled CDs for the window and drew with sharpies the radial design. 

Peacock is done!!

Thanks to the hard work of the 7th grade the finished peacock is up to view. The dots are small rubber circles I got at Extras for Creative Reuse in Lynn. Instead of some factory throwing away all the leftover rubber they donated it to Extras. Schools then get to take what they want and make something awesome like this! Each student got a section the peacock picture and glued the rubber dots down. It is from a scaled up stipple drawing. We just recreated it using rubber dots. 

I have it in the stairway hall so it can be viewed from a distance. 

Year of the Monkey

Here are some projects made in honor of the Chinese New Year. 

7th grade did paper cutting art and the 3rd grade did hidden pictures using warm and cool colors.

Festival Mask

Mask from The Basler Fasnacht which starts on the Monday after 

Ash Wednesday at precisely 4:00 am 

   

 The 8th grade started working on large scale paper mache mask based off the similar mask used in Basel, Switzerland and Mardi Gras in New Orleans in parades and festivals after the week of Ash Wednesday.

This project is going to take some time, so I will keep you posted on the progress. So far the basic forms are done in paper mache. Next we will work on any patch up work and start painting. 

They really didn't need to put the mask on while putting paper on, but they just can't wait to wear them.

Sledders and Snowboarders

The art the 1st grade made is now up at Tufts Library  right outside the children entrance. So please stop by and check it out and maybe check out a few books too. It's a great place to hang out over February vacation. They have a great sledding hill there too.

By the way, the turtle character is "Lighting McRead". He is the children's room mascot.

Navajo Rugs

Sometimes it just feels good to get the paints out and do some large scale work. The 5th grade is having fun making collaborative Navajo rugs by painting on sheets of craft paper. First they start with a stripe design, then they will add patterns normally seen in Navajo weaving. They should look good hanging in the hallway when done.

Hidden Heart

2nd grade prepped for Valentines Day with creating a hidden heart picture. First they drew the heart then added random intersecting lines over the heart to hide it. To make it appear they colored the shapes made in the heart with warm colors and the background shapes cool colors. I think some students wished we had another 15 minutes to finish it up.

Teacher Appreciation Day

I'm feeling the love big time!!!

Best job ever.

Art Club (Comics)

The Comics Art Club ended this week :(

Lots of creative stories and characters where developed in class this session.

We also made a Manga Maki Scroll about the Japanese folk tale, The Straw Millionaire. It is on display outside the art room in the hallway. 

Free Time

Sometimes we get done early with a project. This is when we have "free time". Making clay sculptures is one of the options. Along with origami, inspiration drawings and painting water bottle flowers.

ATC

The cards came in from the Murphy school. The 3rd graders each got to pick a random number to decide who gets a turn picking a card to take home. They each wrote a nice thank you to the student artist that made the card they chose. 

Fish

For Catholic School Week I talked about the fish symbol used to represent Jesus to the 2nd grade. The fish we used is cut from paper towel tubes and colored with oil pastels in warm colors. For the ocean the students collaged cool colored paper on a piece of board. They are a nice mixed media piece.

Crazy Sock Day

Me and Madalena's crazy socks for the special day.

In the spirit of crazy sock day I always try to get the 1st grade to do the pattern sock project. They start with just the sneaker then they have to draw the leg with a ruler. Stripes are added to the sock and each stripe gets a different pattern.