Elementary Grade 5 November 1-5, 2010

Is That Your Mummy ?

Fifth graders were surprised to find a mummy all wrapped in white bandages leaning against the wall in the art room when they came to class Tuesday. As they took turns unwrapping the mummy they discovered written on the "linen" strips 25 different mummy facts. Just as the mummy's identity was about to be revealed it came to life and gave everyone a bit of a fright.

Mr. Warren our volunteer mummy was soon exposed. After everyone stopped laughing, he explained how the students will take an apple and carve a face into it and mummify it. They will create their own recipe for "natron", the material the egyptians used to mummify corpses. Then they will bury their apple heads in the special formula. (Thanks to parent Nina Glynn for providing the ingredients for our "natron" recipe.)

To see how much water and juice their apple contained they will weigh it before it is buried and then weigh it after it has been preserved by the "natron".

They will form a mummy body and attach the preseved head.

Then they will construct a mummy case from papier-mache and paint it with authentic Egyptian designs. Finally their mummy will be placed in the case and shipped to the fifth grade classroom to be part of the Egyptian Museum exhibit.

We will be working on this project for several weeks. We will keep you posted as we learn all about MUMMIES!

Elementary Grade 4 November 1-5, 2010

Grade four is taking a break from under the sea. While their fish are resting waiting for the next step in the process students have moved into outer space. They have changed their point of view and have moved out of this world to take a look at their city and neighborhoods through images sent back to earth from an orbiting a satellite. They are making small sketches in their sketch books and will select a composition to enlarge into a finished abstracted composition.

Elementary Grade 3 November 1-5, 2010

Third graders are taking a close look at the work of Piet Mondrian this week. They have experimented with horizontal and vertical straight line designs on the computer. Now they are moving into the art studio to execute their ideas in cut paper.

Elementary Grade 2 November 1-5, 2010

Fritzi was Paul Klee's favorite cat. Fritzi was always welcome in the painter's studio, even though he would knock over pots of brushes and get under foot. Fritzi was also a "hunting cat" who liked to be outdoors stalking birds and mice. Paul Klee loved Fritzi so much he painted his portrait.

Second graders are taking a close look at this painting of Fritzi. Then they will think of a special cat that they know and use some of Paul Klee's ideas to draw a portrait of their favorite cat. If you look closely you can see what their cats are thinking about.

Elementary Grade 5 October 4-8, 12-15

Fifth graders have completed their "dream time" character designs and have enlarged them to fill their 12x18 inch paper. Now they will use the eraser on the end of a new pencil as the tool for filling their design with the colored dots that characterize Austrailian aboriginal art.

Elementary Grade 4 October 4 - 8, 12-15, 18-22 and 26 -29

Fish Story - the fourth grade fish are taking shape last week they stuffed their paper cut outs of the fish body with the recycled plastic bags. This week we will add fins and tails made from the cereal box cardboard. And then the fun begins. Layers and layers of newspaper soaked in papier-mache "goo" will cover the fish from fin to tail. When all is formed and dry students will add the vibrant colors found on the fantastic fish in the Roatan coral reef.

This is a multi week project. Watch for updates and pictures of our progress.

Thanks to everyone who provided recycle plastic bags and cereal box cardboard!

Elementary Grade 3 October 11-15

Using cut paper third grade students will explore the concept of composition. They will look at the abstract compositions of Mondrian and then using his ideas they will create their own line and space compositons.

Elementary Grade 3 October 4-8

Third graders have put the finishing touches on their still life compositions of flowers in a vase. They used cotton balls and dry pastel colors to create a soft background for their vibrant flowers.

Elementary Grade 2 October 12-15

Grade 2 students will explore the concept of relative size. While making their caterpillar pictures they imagined what is was like to be very small. Now they will explore the idea of "Giants". Changing the size of the elements of the environment they will change the percieved size of their subject.

Elementary Grade 2 October 4-8

Second Grade students completed their mixed media compositions of the caterpillar. They cut circles of their bubble prints and glued them to the environments they had created with marker and pen. Then they added paper antennae and lots of legs.

They are on display in the art room.