Good Luck!

Third graders learned about Chinese New Year and made these good luck banners.  The banners are traditionally hung in the home, or on the door, as part of the celebration.  I know we're a little late, but spring is exploding all around us, and I just couldn't help myself.  This is students' first attempt using the Chinese brush.  They wrote their characters and assembled their banner all in one class.  I wish I had more to show, but they couldn't wait to hang them in their own homes.  The glue had barely dried when they packed them up and took them home. 

Goals:
Understand the meaning and traditions surrounding Chinese New Year Celebration.
Recognize calligraphy as an art form.
Be able to create a piece of calligraphy using traditional brush and ink.

Vocabulary:
Calligraphy: literally, beautiful writing.
Chinese New Year:  most important Chinese celebration also known as Spring Festival.
Pi: brush.
Mo: ink.

There a lots of good resources on the net.  This is the source I used for the banners whose characters mean "good fortune". http://www.asia-art.net/chinese_brush.html

We're moving on to Chinese brush painting and will post the pictures soon.

Aren't Field Trips Fun? and a Quick Printmaking Activity

On Thursday April 8th, we took 57 students from Danby, Vermont for a long ride over the mountain to visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass.  While there, the group learned about reading pictures in the museum library.  In the gallery we viewed some really great art by Eric Carle. We learned about printmaking and saw woodblock prints in a special exhibit by artist and picture book illustrator Antonio Frasconi.  His prints are beautiful.  Now I'm on a mission to locate his books.  After breaking for lunch in the sunbathed courtyard, students visited the art studio to try their hand at making some prints of their own.  

We'd like to give very special thanks to our teachers and paraprofessionals whose willingness to come in early and leave late made our visit possible.  Thanks to parents who joined us on our trip! Thanks to the Target field trip grant for providing the bus. 

This was a cute make-and-take for any age.  To make the stamp, students glued pre-cut, sticky-back foam pieces onto a cardboard base.  The stamps were inked on homemade ink pads.  These looked super easy to make.  They were nothing more than a thin foam sponge glued onto a Styrofoam tray (looked like a section of a super market meat tray).  Thinned black tempera paint was squeezed out of an old dish detergent bottle onto the ink pads as needed by our instructor.  Each child was given an accordion book to stamp.  Those who finished early were given colored pencils to embellish or write in their books.

Tape Resist Trees

Making a forest of tape resist trees is fun, quick, and easy.  Sixth graders will take these home for the upcoming art fund raiser.  Students were shown a monochromatic example of birch trees.  They were given the choice of a monochromatic or polychromatic color scheme, and could choose the type of tree they wanted in their art.  Sixth graders started by taping a border around their work.  Next, they added a moon or sun.  To make the orb of the moon, they cut out a paper circle slightly smaller than their moon.  They taped over the circle letting the tape overhang the edges.  The overhanging tape was trimmed about 1/4" larger than the paper.  We chose this method because we wanted the tape to stick to the paper without ripping it when removed.
Next, the trees and branches were taped in.  We used easy-release blue painters tape.
In the next class we painted in the negative space with liquid watercolors.  Students chose either realistic or abstract colors.  Some chose to sprinkle with Kosher salt to get the speckled effect.

We found that the salt took effect quite quickly.  We brushed it away after 10 minutes, and were ready to peel the tape off before the class ended.

Field Trip Schedule

Art students will be hitting the road in April.  We have two field trips planned at Currier Memorial School.  On Thursday, April 1st we'll be visiting the Southern Vermont Art Center to see the exhibit "Art from Schools".  It's really great to see our artwork in such a great venue, and to see what other art students are doing, too.  Our trip is funded by the Southern Vermont Art Center Grant that also funded the Eric Carle Festival at school in December. 
On Thursday, April 8th, grades 1,2,3, and 4 will be traveling to Amherst, Mass to visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  Our trip is funded by the Target Field Trip Grant that we received in January.
Special thanks goes out to our sponsors for making these great art experiences possible for our students.

Kinder-Cities

 

Colorful cities created by kindergarten and first grade.  The buildings were scraped on with a cardboard scraper in primary colors.  When the buildings were finished, black paint was put out and the road was scraped along the bottom.  We let the paintings dry and in the next class added the outline and windows.  To make the outline students used the edge of a smaller piece of cardboard to print (not scrape) straight lines  around the buildings.  When the outlining was finished, white paint and a brush was used to add the windows.  I really like the look of these.  They were easy enough for the little ones, and the kids really liked making them. 

Hello Spring!

The peepers aren't in the ponds quite yet.  Not even down here in the valley.  But they will be soon!  When we hear the little frogs peeping; we'll know that it's spring.
We made these little frogs for an art fund raiser.  Kids drew their frogs with pencil and outlined them with black flair pen.  We colored them with yellow and green crayons and gave them a green water color wash. When they were dry, artists carefully cut out their frogs, lily pads, stems, and flowers.  They arranged everything on the page to get it just the way they wanted it, and then began their careful gluing.

Good Bye Winter....

The snow is melting, even up on the mountain.  It's time to say good bye to winter's ways.  Good bye, winter.  We're moving on.