The Line that Connects Us All

It has been a great start to the year! Our opening project that all of out students collaborated on is "The Line that Connects Us All." We are all unique but when we come together, at school, our lives touch and we are all connected.

Each student was asked to create an artwork that represents themselves. In order to make it collaborative, the students were asked to draw a line between 2 dots on their papers (3 inches up from the bottom). When placed directly side by side each student's art connects with all the other students' art! The line that runs through all of the artworks is "The Line that Connects us All." We are all unique but when we come together at school our lives touch and we are all connected.



Once students bring these home they can connect their artworks at home with their siblings' art and a new collaborative work is born. In this case, the line illustrates their family connection.

The book I used to kick off this project was Andrew Drew and Drew which I give a whole hearted 5 stars for creativity and artistic encouragement!

Emojis

At Bauer all of the teachers were Emojis for Halloween!



Today in art class the kids learned a bit about the history of emojis! The younger kids focused more on emotions and how to draw an emotional face. The older kids pulled together their creative ideas to create their own unique emojis!

Square 1 Art

It's that time again! Your child has already received their free Square 1 Art stickers and order forms have been sent home!  If you would like to order merchandise with your child's artwork on it please submit your order by the due date!

The grade with the highest percentage of orders will get an additional clay project this year!

Due Dates:

Bauer Elementary: November 10, 2015

Forest Gove Elementary: November 16, 2015

Items will be delivered to school before Christmas break so they could make for great gifts! (A percentage of each order goes to support the art room!)

Art at Home

Here is a 3 minute clip with some suggestions for supporting art at home! Enjoy!

Rainbow Gardens

Second graders focused on color during this project! We began by talking about rainbow order and how rainbow order can help us to remember which primary colors to use to make secondary colors! We watched this fun video before painting a rainbow sunset to use as the background for this project! We only used the 3 primary colors of liquid watercolors to create the background. Liquid watercolors are great for color mixing when you layer them!

Next we read "Planting a Rainbow" and added the flowers!

2nd Graders at Forest Grove won an extra clay project because their grade level had the highest percentage of students participating in the Square 1 Art fundraiser (at Bauer Mrs. DeGram's Kindergarten class won). At Forest Grove we talked about symmetry and created butterfly sculptures using Model Magic, pipe cleaners and beads!

Learning Goals: I can...

- Tell rainbow order

- Mix primary colors to create secondary colors

- Create smooth marks with thick paint (flowers)

- Use symmetry to design a butterfly

- Create a 3D sculpture (Forest Grove)

Raven

Second graders made these awesome raven collages after learning a bit about the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest.  We started by reading the story "Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest."

Then we drew a frame with a raven inside it on both sides of a black paper.  We chose the best side, cut it out and glued it to a colorful paper. From there we layered shapes and colors.  Students were encouraged to have a few shapes that had 3 layers of color.  We worked on designing our frames as we worked.

Learning Goals: I can...

- Tell about the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest

- Tell about totem poles

- Explain the story of the Raven

- Create a collage

- Layer paper to create a more detailed design

- Balance color

We also learned about totem poles because they were so important to the Native Americans in the Pacific North West.  We learned that totem poles help shoe stories and record history.

Castles

Second graders created these fun castles! After learning a little about castles we focused on learning to make our castles look 3D.  We talked about forms (3D shapes) and we learned to draw cones, cylinders and cubes. We included these forms in our drawings.

After drawing the castles, we added value (shadows) to make our forms (3D shapes) look even more 3D. The kids learned to color lightly (grip the pencil loosely) with pencil horizontally (perpendicular with the sides of the castle tower).  After coloring lightly, they rubbed the shading vertically to blend and create shadows.

Next we practiced all kinds of characters that kids could include in their castles.  Students were encouraged to add them in wherever they wanted!

We colored the characters and small details with crayon and painted the rest!

Learning Goals: I can...

- Tell about castle building jobs: blacksmith, carpenter, mason, architect

- Explain what a form (3D shape is)

- Draw 3D shapes 

- Add value (shading) to forms to create the illusion of thickness

- Color carefully using good craftsmanship