Denver Art Museum Field Trip

This past week the 5/6th grade class was able to go to Denver for a great feild trip. We went to both the Art Museum and the Museum of Nature and Science. Teh kids were wonderful and very sweet to our docent at the art museum, even though she went on for about 25 minutes longer than she was supposed to. This made it so the students had very little time to sketch at the museum but I still think that they had a lot of fun, I know I did! Thank you also to our 2 wonderful mom's for their help on this trip. We couldn't have done it without you and I hope you had a good time too!

 Here are a couple of pictures I was able to take of our trip. I'm sorry that they are a little blurry, we weren't able to use flash inside the museum:

Art on the Move and Flower Power

Wow, that was a rather long delay. I wanted to have all the process for the Calder inspired mobiles before posting about them, which took about a month (and they are still not all the way done!) I also had a bit of a medical commitment that I had to see to and I started a new job at the Longmont Museum as the School Tour Coordinator. Its been a busy couple of weeks!

The mobile project went a lot better than I anticipated. I was worried about how the shapes would turn out and whether or not the mobiles would actually hang correctly. Not only did they shapes turn out well and the kids worked together well, but also the mobile themselves look FABULOUS!

The first step was to get the shapes made. The older grades made 3D shapes out of poster board and masking tape. The students worked in groups of 2 or 3 to design their shapes and actually build them. Each mobile is unique and well thought out.

After the students made the shapes, they painted them and we are now in the process of hanging them. I can get about 1 mobile hung per class, but they should all be done in time for the art show.

The younger grades made mobiles based on Calder as well. They drew scenes of the circus, which Alexander Calder loved to go to. And then they were hung from a 3 tier mobile. The kindergarten class is almost finished and I am currently working on hanging the mobiles for the 1/2 grade class

The mobiles were a success, and I think the students had fun working on this project. It took team work and a lot of patience to be able to come up with such a great end result and I am very proud of the work they have done.


The past few weeks the students have also been working on Georgia O'Keeffe inspired works. The older grades did detail drawings of flowers, which I don't have pictures of unfortunately, but hopefully I can get pictures of them this week.
The younger grades made 3D flower gardens. They cut out flowers from different types of paper and then glued them on to the paper so that the petals stick up. Then they added backgrounds that gave an extra pop of color. They are very cute.



Boxes, boxes everywhere!

This week I had the whole school work on their first 3D project of the year. Each grade was to paint a flat box shape in the style of De Stijl:

 It was a quick one day lesson that I was glad we were able to do. The boxes will remain flat until closer to the art show this spring and then I will glue them into their 3D forms. Here are some pictures of what the boxes look like:

Next week we will be starting our Calder inspired mobiles. I am am looking forward to doing another large 3D project! The students seem to really like that kind of art.

Time Flies!

Wow, I can't believe that this week's class was the last one for 2011! Please forgive me for the delay in updating, the holiday season is upon us and everyone is trying to get last minute meetings and appointments out of the way it seems, which left me very little time last week and I didn't get the chance to update the blog. For that I am truly sorry.

This week we finished our work in the area of Cubism. I like to think that the students had a lot of fun with this project. However, I am also certain that it vexed a few who thought that creating this way would be easy. The pictures came out beautifully, as per usual, and once again I am overjoyed to have these students working so hard.

The 3rd/4th grade class spent their time wisely this week and were able to finish some unique and beautiful works. Although a few of them are not technically cubist in style, I am still delighted that they were able to create something that they were proud of.

The 5th/6th grade class were working on self-portraits in the cubist style. This was a hard thing for many of them to do because I was asking for the students to represent themselves in a way that was completely new to them. They still did a bang up job though!

The Kindergarten class learned all about how to use simple shapes to make up a person. They were great at picking shapes that worked well together! They had a wonderful time deciding what colors should go where on their pictures too!

By and large, I think I am most impressed with the work I saw in the 1st/2nd grade class on this project. These kiddos are so mathematical and inquisitive I just knew that the geometric shapes would appeal to them. Their work speaks for itself for sure!

  

I hope that all of you have a wondergul holiday season! See you in the new year!