Hey there! We're so excited about a new semester of fun art projects! Sadly, Teacher Cindy had sick kiddos this morning so she wasn't able to be there. Today we made paper sculptures by rolling and gluing strips of paper. It was a lot of fun to see the kids' different ideas for mixing colors and height. Generally, we worked on the concept that there are no rights and wrongs in art. :) A few of the kids left their projects on the stage (including my daughter!), so if you forgot yours, make sure to grab it next week.

09/22- Collage

Today we briefly talked about the works of Henri Matisse, specifically "The Sorrows of the King". In this piece of art he used cut pieces of colored paper to make a picture. This is called a collage. For our project, we made our own collages.

Nov 19 - Michelangelo

Today we learned about the painter and sculptor Michelangelo.  We looked at a few pictures of his most famous work, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  We learned that it took him 4 years to complete and that he did the whole thing while lying on his back!  For our activity we drew pictures while lying on our backs.

Nov 12 - John Constable

Today we learned about painter John Constable.  He was one of the best known landscape artists of his time.  Our activity was a cloudscape.  This didn't work out as well as planned and ended up being somewhat of a bust for our short class time.  But they still had fun painting the "clouds".

Nov 5 - Auguste Rodin

Today we learned a little bit about sculptor Auguste Rodin.  Rodin made his statues of metal and carved stone, but we made our masterpieces with clay.  The kids had a good time using their special carving tools on the clay.  They were able to bring home the clay to harden their statues or continue making something new.

10/22 - Marcel Duchamp

Today we learned about artist Marcel Duchamp.  Duchamp was a French painter who enjoyed trying new, wacky, or unusual ideas that others had not tried before.  One of his favorite things to do was to drop pieces of string on paper.

Our activity was similar to Duchamp's favorite art technique.  We dipped string into paint and dropped (and some dragged) it onto papers.  The kids had a lot of fun trying different ways of dropping their string!

10/15 - John James Audubon

Today we learned about John James Audubon.  He is one of the most famous painters of birds in the world.  It was his life's work to paint a picture of every species of bird in America.  He painted 435 watercolors of birds. 

For our activity, we looked at books and pictures of animals and tried to draw them as best we could.