Thanks once again for checking out our art blog! Here are the lessons that will be taught in art over the next few weeks during our first rotation.
5th grade - We will be creating a graphite, pencil drawing of our shoes. Students will begin the drawing with whatever shoes they happen to be wearing on the day of their arrival in art. The students will be required to bring their same pair of shoes for the entire 3 consecutive days they come to art. We will use their shoes as subject matter to explore the techniques of shading in a pencil drawing. This technique pinpoints Value and Line, two of the art elements. Students will attempt to apply various shading strategies to complete a 9x12 drawing on 80lb sulfide drawing paper. Compositon arrangement will also be a key component in their drawing.
4th grade - The students will be lead in a teacher directed drawing of a one-point perspective city drawing. A brief history inspection will be covered as we explore the Renaissance and how one-point perspective derived from that time period. The students will be asked to follow Mr. Hale's drawing in a mystery format. The city is not revealed until we get towards the middle point of the artwork. Once the children realize they are drawing a city, then they will be able to customize their city, so that every city will be set apart in its own intricacies. This drawing technique offers to the children a way to represent three dimensional aspects in a 2 dimensional drawing. It is fun to watch their amazement as their drawings start to "pop" before their eyes.
3rd grade - These children will be among the first to begin a clay project this year. They will be constructing a coil pot. Their designs will be complete with both a vessel as well as an attached lid for their project. The students will have several options in the creation of their pots from size to shape. This 3 day rotation will only focus on the construction of their coil pots. At a later date in the year, the children will glaze their pots with ceramic paint for a professional finish to their piece.
2nd grade - This group of children will be constructing an artwork in the style of Henri Matisse. They will explore aspects of his life and his unique approach to creating geometric and organic shapes in his art. Henri Matisse used scissors rather than pencils to draw, and his whole approach was concerned with the silhouette of objects rather than their inner details. The children will use scissors and construction paper to make an abstract or aquatic world using only the nature of geometric and organic shapes. The children will spend the first session observing demos and begin the initial planning of their project. The next two sessions will focus on the creation and completion of their art, followed with a classroom critique.
1st grade - We will focus on shape as well with first grade. However our focus is not on a particular artist, but instead we are making the clear distinction between geometric shapes (man-made) and organic shapes (shapes that come from nature). The children will review the 7 art elements and then we narrow our approach to the art element of shape. Each child will use wooden blocks at their table to construct an abstract crayon resist. They will randomly trace the wooden blocks across their paper until a desired composition is achieved. Once the compostion fulfills the requirements, the students will use markers and crayons for coloring. A final application of watercolor is applied for the crayon resist technique. Children will be required to complete the project over the three, consecutive day session.
Kindergarten - These children will be creating a pinch pot from clay. It will be complete with a created lid to ornament the top of their pot. Children will be encouraged to decorate their pot with inscriptions of shape and line. For some classes this will be a two day session to build their pot and for others, it may be a three day session. If time permits, we will then move into our next lesson which involves a drawing project centered around dinosaurs. In the dinosaur lesson, we explore the notion of foreground, middleground, and background in a 2 dimensional drawing. We also have an imaginary travel into the past of these thunder lizards. We return to the safety of the art room and create drawings from our imaginary excursion.
