Spring Art Show 2012 - We Love Art!

There were a few frantic moments getting everything ready but somehow it all came together.  The children were excited, the parents were happy... the teachers were nervous but smiling!  The joy filling the halls of East Elementary was contagious!  Children were singing, performing math chants, reciting poetry, showing off artwork, dancing joyously and sharing the beauty of childhood with their families.  As I walked down the halls greeting parents and feeling the positive energy all around me, I just tried to take it all in.  I happened to overhear a brief conversation in the "yellow" section of the color wheel hall.  A 2nd grade girl was showing her self portrait to her family.

2nd grade self portraits drawn in the style of Modigliani.  

Parent:  "You drew this?"

Child:  "Yes... and I painted it too. I mixed my own colors!"

Parent:  "Really?  It is so beautiful!  I don't know how you did it. "

Child:   "You could do it."

Parent:   "I wouldn't know where to start."

Child:   "Oh, you just do it!"

As I listened to this conversation and heard the confidence in the little girl's voice, I had to think how much has changed in the last four years as our school participated in the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program (BTS/ALP).

Prior to this program, I taught 3rd grade to students who hardly knew how to draw. It was obvious that they were hungry for artistic expression and I found myself taking classes from Mimi Thomas to earn my art endorsement.  Mimi came to the school, watched me teach and gave me suggestions.   As I  started integrating more art into my lessons, I saw my students flourish in the arts.  I started using visual arts, music, dance and drama as part of my daily instruction.

The year that started it all... studying line and shape.

My artsy little 3rd graders making a history timeline!

In early spring of 2008,  the legislature passed a landmark bill creating the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program.  It hardly seemed possible that we could be one of the schools that received funding for this 4 year research based program.  Yet, with community support, we applied for the program and we were accepted!

The first year of our program was difficult.  Our school was filled to capacity and Mr. Heaton wasn't sure where he would put the art program.  I ended up in the Title One room sharing a classroom with special education.  I still wonder how we crammed 4 tables into half a classroom and ran the program!  As a school, we were trying to feel our way through it. When the first few teachers came in for art lessons, they didn't quite know what to expect and neither did I!   Together, we started learned more about the side-by-side teaching model and we started working together to make our program a success.

In four years, have we changed the climate of our school this much?  Hard to believe, but true.

We want to thank Beverley Taylor Sorenson for the gift she has given to the children of this community.

This year, the walls of our school have been transformed from a drab brown to brilliant colors.    Starting by the office, we discover our "sunflower" hall... celebrating the artistic style of Vincent Van Gogh and then we begin our artistic journey throughout the school.

Silky Sunflowers and Swirly Skies

The main hall by the art room is now a giant color wheel!  We start with fire, enjoying the warmth and beauty of all the warm colors as we travel into WARM-TOWN.

 This is a theme for our kindergarten art.

Entering our color wheel hall with first grade sun and moon art.

Walking down the hall the day after the art show.

Modigliani Portraits and Writing

Duck Stamp Contest Entries

As we walk down the hall, the yellow slides into yellow green and light blue and and gradually we cool down until we end up in the icy icy regions of COOL-VILLE!

Alphabet Under Construction

The moon is cool....

Icy Snowflakes and Winter Pictures

Gyotaku Fish Prints

Color Wheel Flower Gardens

The color wheel hall has been fun for all the children and has turned into a teaching tool as we discuss warm and cool colors.

In the rest of the school there is still lots of art to see!

Down by the GYM the first grade has beautiful Eric Carle Art, Kadinsky Color Wheel Circles, and more beautiful flower gardens.

The Kindergarten graced us with beautiful paintings of sunflowers, radial abstract art, patriotic art and Eric Carle butterflies as well as kindergarten writing projects!

The 2nd grade hall is filled with art about space, spring flowers, habitats, self portraits and WRITING!    This year, as our emphasis shifted to the language arts, every classroom teacher was encouraged to help students interact with their art and write more about their art.  Almost every teacher displayed multiple writing projects.

Sunflower Poetry

Hubble Telescope Pictures

Habitat Line Art

In the commons  and down by the gym you will find amazing chalk murals created by the 2nd grade!  When comparing these to murals created the first year of our program, you will be stunned to see the progress the children have made in observational drawing.

Mrs. Embleton's 2nd Grade Community

Mrs. Wall's 2nd Grade Mural

Mrs. Marx's 2nd Grade Mural

Finally, the 1st grade hall is filled with many unique art projects developed by the teachers themselves.  Many of these are independent of our regular art classes.  From shaded spheres, to sun and shadow art, Easter poems, kites and math cities, the first grade teachers worked hard to create unique art that ties in with the reading, math and science core curriculum.  I will try to highlight some of these projects in future blog  posts.

 

If you haven't come to the school yet, please come!  The displays will still be up for another week or two and you really won't want to miss it! 

We especially want to thank our administration for their enthusiastic support of this program, the PTA for being so generous with their grants and financial support, and also the school fundraiser which provided the money for our art supplies.  I want to thank the parents for their positive words of support and for helping the classroom teachers mount the art, put together the alphabet books and create beautiful displays.

Without all of you, this would not be possible.

In final tribute, we would like to thank Beverley Taylor Sorenson for her vision and tireless efforts in bringing color into the lives of our children through her foundation.  For more information about Beverley and the BTS/ALP please visit her website: http://www.artworksforkids.org/

We truly are proud to be a Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program School!

Mrs. Sampson, BTS/ALP Visual Art Specialist, East Elementary School

Here Comes the Sun!

First Grade Sketchbook - Sun and Moon Art

Simply Amazing!

At the beginning of each lesson I have the children come into the room and start drawing in their sketchbook as a self-start activity. Then we turn to the back of the book and draw little sketches together for a few minutes.  I use this time to help the children practice drawing and also to help them understand important things about lesson.  This is the first year I have done sketchbook with 1st grade students and I have found that our sketchbook activity has really helped the children gain confidence int their artistic abilities.  I am amazed at how well each child is doing.  At the end of each sketching assignment I try to go around the room and stamp each child's book with a fun rubber stamp that matches the lesson.  This offers an instant reward for the child, but it also gives me the chance to check each child's work to actually see how they are doing and also to give them positive encouragement.

In the first part of the lesson we were learning about the sun and the moon as we reviewed important elements of the science core and math core as we were creating art.   We learned that sometimes the earth casts a shadow on the moon and that the moon changes during the month.  We talked about folk art and we looked at different ways the sun and moon are portrayed in art, some with triangle shaped rays, and some with curvy lines.  Then we each created our own sun and moon art using oil pastels in warm and cool colors.

The next week we came back and painted our pictures with warm and cool colors.  This is such a fun activity for children and the artwork is just beautiful!

We made a giant color wheel hall for our art show and we posted some of the pictures on the warm end of the hall and some on the cool end!  It was fun for the children to walk down the hall... starting with fire and ending in ice!

Eric Carle Art 2012

We love Eric Carle at East Elementary!  

This year the first grade classes were getting ready for their program and as part of the preparation, each class decided to create Eric Carle art that was unique to the program and went along with the theme for each class. For the first part of this lesson we painted beautiful textured paper.  For the next lesson we created different pictures drawing and cutting different shapes from our beautiful patterned paper.  The kindergarten classes also celebrated spring by making Eric Carle butterflies.

 The Kindergarten classes all read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and then created pretty symmetrical butterflies using basic shapes.

The wings on this one are very creative!

Mrs. Percival's class created Roosters.  In reading about Eric Carle's history, we discovered that one of the first drawings he did was based on a little rooster and an ox that his teacher stamped on his paper.  From that moment on, roosters have been a recurrent theme throughout his work.  This was project was especially fun because the pictures turned out so cute and the children were able to make each one creatively.  We started with a basic egg shape for the body, then added the neck feathers, a head, curvy tail feathers.  The children drew the legs with a crayon.  All of these pictures are so cute!

 Mrs. Gerber's learned about radial symmetry and created spring flowers.

Miss Eberhard's class created frogs. The frogs were super cute and super easy!  Every child drew one large oval for the body. Then they drew 8 smaller ovals for the legs, little finger ovals, half circles for the eyes and cute shapes for the tongue. They cute out the shapes, arranged the frog any way they wanted and glued it all down. We added details with a sharpie.

Mrs. Brinkerhoff's class made bees to go along with their school program.  This was a little hard for the children to visualize, but they were still very cute. 

Mrs. Evan's class wanted to create "slugs" so we worked on this and ended up making a slug body and then added a little curved shell.  We found this drawing in one of Eric Carle's books.  It was cute and easy to do this simple two piece snail.  We added a spiral with colored chalk on the back of the shell to add a little bit of decoration.

Miss Zirker's class created beautiful spring kites.  This looks simple, but it ended up being one of the most complicated projects, mostly because I didn't manage it very well.

 To make the kite, we had each child cut triangles from a template, then cut each triangle in half and share half with a friend so they could end up with 4 different colors in their kite. The mirror image got us in trouble.  Next time, we will tell the children to make their kite and then have everyone share the RIGHT half pieces!  We had kids sharing the left side and then trading it for a right side and it didn't always work out. The children had trouble visualizing how the kite would go back together and it got complicated!   Miss Zirker and I were running around trying to help the children put all the pieces back together so it actually looked like a kite.  I will do better if we ever do it again!

Mrs. Rutledge was focusing on doing chores and cleaning house, so her class creating these darling little cottages!  This was fun project and the children were able to cute basic squares and triangles to create little houses.

Mrs. Peterson's class made cute little people with umbrella's standing in a rainstorm and Miss Bowcutt's class created a scene from "The Very Tiny Seed" showing someone stepping in the mud. See pictures of these two projects in our 1st grade spring art post.  I wasn't able to get a photo of these projects before we put them up in the hall.

After everyone finished their Eric Carle projects, the classroom teachers put them up on display for the first grade program!  The halls are looking beautiful and we will leave this display up for our  upcoming Art Show on April 11th!  Spring is finally coming to East Elementary!

2nd Grade Stripes -- Update

After a very successful planning meeting, the art for the 2nd grade program came together beautifully!  To create a focal mural reminiscent of Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night, the children from Mrs. Embleton's class painted curvy red stripes on butcher paper.  Mrs. Embleton carefully arranged the artwork to create these beautiful rolling hills.  

The walls around the central mural were covered floor to ceiling with almost 200 large patriotic art pieces created by the 2nd graders!  The results were quite stunning, very colorful and very patriotic!  

To create this artwork, each child painted an abstract blue field and then added red curvy stripes to fill the paper.  Then they added a few start sprinkled randomly throughout.

This was a very fun project because we don't often work in such large scale. The children got to use very large brushes and lots of paint.  It was fun for them and the results were beautiful!

Sunny St. George and Cherry Blossoms

 Last week I spent most of the week in Sunny St. George at the Utah Art Education Conference.  I was asked to share one of my favorite kindergarten lessons with the other teachers.  In Japanese culture they say that if you study a cherry blossom closely enough you can find the answer to all of the questions of life.  Every year in May I like to do an entire unit on Japanese art and culture in the entire school.  I created this finger paint lesson for kindergarten students, but it is fun for any age... including adults!  As I started to teach the lesson, some of the teachers looked hesitant when I told them that this is a finger-paint activity!  We started by creating beautiful bumpy branches and then we added blended flowers with white and red paint, and a few little green accents.  We used baby wipes to clean up.  The mess is very minimal and it is fun to get your hands a little dirty.

The results are beautiful!  I often say that the kindergarten pictures are prettier than the adults, but these teachers had wonderful time and created some very lovely works of art!

The palette was simple... just brown, white, red and green tempera paint on a foam plate. I used Crayola creamy tempera paint.  I have used other brands in the past, but this is my favorite.

It took a bit of encouragement, but everyone jumped in and started painting.  It was interesting to see how every painter interpreted the project just a little differently.

This artist made heavier branches than most, creating a very bold look to her painting.

Here are a few pictures as they are drying.  It was fun to see different interpretations and it gave me a lot of ideas for my own art.  This art project would be great for any age and would be a good inspiration piece for writing poetry.  We will doing this project in our kindergarten classes about the first week of May. I try to do it when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom!  I also have silk blossoms to show them and we study the picture "Almond Blossoms" by Van Gogh as inspiration for the bumpy branches!

After enjoying the warm weather in St. George and painting cherry blossoms, it was difficult to come back to the frigid weather of the Uintah Basin!

First Grade Heart Art

This week the first graders created beautiful rainbow hearts with oil pastels. Using a black oil pastel, each child drew a large heart in the middle of a black piece of paper and then drew curvy lines extending from the edge of the heart to the edge of the paper.  They colored their heart using 3 different colors to create shadows and highlights.  Finally, after coloring each section a different color, they added pattern and design using complementary colors.  

Last week we had fun using metallic markers to decorate the "cool color" hearts we had painted a few weeks ago while learning to blend watercolors.   Each child learned how to create lines with different patterns and to write messages on the hearts.  We learned about different decorative patterns and created these beautiful love notes for our families.