Cylinders

Oh boy, my silly, silly 1st graders. I love them.

They are also very smart. I asked them what you call the shape of a can and they got it. Perfect, because we were going to work with making cylinders. First they each got a piece of clay and I showed an easy way to turn it into a cylinder. It's not as easy as you might think. They probably would have been happy to just play with the clay the whole class, but we had to move on to drawing. Next, a quick lesson on how to draw your basic cylinder. Then the students got to choose if it was going to be a glass vase for flowers or a ceramic one. Each would be drawn differently. 

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.