Art Underway! Our First Weeks in Art

It's wonderful to be back! Take a look inside the art studio at Prairie Ridge...


A view from the back corner of the classroom!

Above the tables hang colorful lanterns.

New carpets for reading and discussions

Art vocabulary alphabet, clean up procedures and elements and principles of art cards.

We call the Mona Lisa our Classroom Mascot Masterpiece. When I say "Mona," students respond with "Lisa!" and must show me the 3 things.

A color theory mural I created to remind students of the important color families used in art.

Our first week of art we created sketchbooks. These sketchbooks will be kept in class portfolio drawers for the whole year and will be used for note-taking, vocabulary, sketching, experimenting with mediums, writing down thoughts, reflecting, etc. Students had the opportunity to use a variety of materials to adorn the cover of their sketchbook.
Here is the video I made to show students on the first week of school. I has a bit of a dramatic and mysterious feel, which is appropriate for this year, because we will be hunting for and investigating hidden meanings and stories within art.

 

As we begin the second week, students were introduced to the word "medium." An art medium is the substance the artist uses to create an artwork. For example, the medium Michaelangelo used for his sculpture, "David" was marble, and Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was created using oil paint.

We also differentiated "medium/media" from "tools." Scissors, paint brushes and palettes are not art mediums, but tools we use to help us apply the art mediums.

We then applied our learning and experimented with 6 mediums around the room. At the final station, students created a heart shape on fabric, paper, felt or burlap using a variety of media: wool, yarn, oil pastel, watercolor. The hope is to combine every student's heart together on panels to create an installation for the school. Here is one layout I created this week. It will be interesting to see how the final piece takes shape!

4th and 5th grade students learned about the felting technique this week and felted a heart that will be part of the collaborative all-school installation. I hope to get it completed and hung this week with every student's contribution.

Here is the video I made to introduce students to the word, "media/medium."