A stich in time.

My goodness it has been a while. I must confess I forgot my log name and password, it comes from having too many accounts, log ins and passwords now days! Finally I found my way back in and hope to update our progress a little more regularly.

It is very nearly our centenary open day, and it is getting a little frantic in the art room. We are making Bunting Banners for each class as a way of celebrating our centenary. Way way back last year when the ideas were floating about for what to do someone suggested that we get funding to pay an artist to come in and make a quilt with all the kids. Nice idea but a bit old fashioned I thought and besides textiles are something I enjoy in my own arts practice and I have quite an extensive range of sewing skills myself so I suggested that it was something I could do with the kids myself, that would leave us free to explore having an artist come in to work in a medium that I am not familiar with. As a result we have Kat and Jasper from VJZoo coming in to project the children's art works up onto the rooftops in a very modern contemporary art form. I think it is kind of nice to celebrate the past in a very modern way. More of that in a future post.

(These photos were taken at Art Blast in Fremantle last week)

Now, back to the stitching.

I decided to go with each child stitching a rectangle for a strand of bunting flags which have become very popular in recent years for times of celebration. The UK have used them for years stringing up strands of the Union Jack across the streets on special days, Prayer Banners and flags are also very common in Asian cultures like Nepal and Bali. Even in times past bunting and banners have been used to decorate castles and armies. We looked at these things at the beginning of our project.

And how is it all going? Well they look great so far but the celebration is next week and I have four bunting strands made up. Because of swimming, excursions, theme confusion and sports carnivals along with the normal day to day interruptions and some classes taking way more time than I thought they would and I still have 10 more to sew up! I'm not panicking! ... much!

Each class has worked on a theme that reflects their history research in their classrooms. For example the year ones have looked closely at the home and how day to day things have changed over time. Their bunting flags show old fashioned and modern modes of communication or transport or things used around the home.

One year three class looked at how the local environment has changed over time and their bunting shows native and introduced plants and animals.

The Flags have been made using old recycled uniforms because it represents our school, we are a sustainable one and it is the in thing to reduce reuse and recycle but also as a nod to times past with the thrifty and frugal ways during the depression times and for the 'war effort'

I am looking forward to seeing them all dancing and flapping about in the wind on Saturday as we celebrate 100 years at Palmyra.

Marvelous Matisse

This term started with a still life drawing activity with the children from year one to seven. I set up a selection of objects, some of which were used in our centenary cook book. 

(year 1)

Some of these drawings will be used for our big projection art work at the end of the year on our open day. But most importantly these drawings formed the beginning of the process in developing our own still life projects.

(year 4)

The year one and two and some threes will be focusing on Matisse's work with his beautiful use of colour and pattern. The children explored pattern by looking at Matisse's work and experimenting with some of their own patterns. 

Harmony in Red/La desserte
Spring 1908Oil on canvas
70 7/8 x 86 5/8 in. (180 x 220 cm)
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

They used these to create some "wallpaper" which became the base for a collage art work, using maths room 2D shapes and templates I made to help them create large simple shapes to represent plates and fruit etc for their still life design. 

The students were encouraged to explore their ideas by arranging and rearranging their cut out pieces before gluing them down.

Some of them worked really well.

(These works are from the year one classes)

Luncheon of the boating party. (Arts responses)

I have started this term with a common activity across all year levels. We are discussing and thinking about Renoir's painting "The Luncheon of the boating party"

This painting is alive with imagery and it is easy to imagine you are a part of this lively dinner party. It has things that prompts us to ask questions like, 'why are those men wearing singlets when the man in the background has a top hat and a coat on?" "Why is the lady holding a dog on the table?"
I have asked the junior children to imagine they were there at the party and asked them to tell me what happened before and after this scene recorded in the painting.

The middle and upper classes were given a different activity asking them questions at different levels about the art work. Prior to answering the questions we had discussed the painting with reference to the types of questions featured on the work sheet. The younger grades were allowed to work collaboratively if they wanted to but the yr 6/7 were required to answer these questions independently as they have had more experience over the years answering questions such as these in class discussions at the beginning of most projects.

Wabi Sabi, Happy accidents and Beautiful Oops!

One of the biggest challenges for an art teacher (besides getting the kids to pack up properly and get the work done in the time allocated!) is the balance between teaching kids 'how to draw', encouraging development and understanding of ways of looking and recording what they see in front of them or in their imaginations and and letting their own natural creativity and quirky, wild imaginative drawings survive the 'teaching process'.
Another challenge that I have found to be surprisingly common of late for all year levels is the "I can't draw syndrome". I say surprisingly because often the younger kids don't care a jot if they haven't got it exactly right and just enjoy the drawing for drawing sake telling wondrous stories as their page fills with all manner of images and inventive squiggles. But lately I have encountered more and more kids worried to take a little risk and make a mistake.
So over the last few weeks I have had a dual focus in my lessons. Firstly the arts elements of colour pattern and line but then also that of trying to encourage the kids to step out of their comfort zone and have a go, take a risk and make a mistake. Mistakes are important things that we all need to learn. I think that Einstein was quoted as saying after hundreds of so called failed trials of something or rather that he had not failed a hundred times but rather he had discovered a hundred ways that did not work...Perspective!
SO with this in mind I have been introducing the kids to some ideas around taking risks with their learning especially with art. Last year we spoke of Wabi Sabi - the perfection or beauty of things that are not quite perfect. The fact that often times the things that make something imperfect are the reason it is so unique and why we love it so much, think of your favourite battered old teddy bear or a baby's blankie. Or a home made cake, often they don't look perfect but they have more substance and flavour than the perfect store bought variety.
This year I have been showing the kids in years one to 4 this video clip bases on the book Beautiful Oops. Beautiful Oops focuses on the "happy Accident " approach to mistakes. Look at a mistake as an opportunity to make something beautiful, something different, or more interesting. This doesn't just happen it requires exercising your 'creative brain' or imagination.

at the end of the rainbow.

This year my teaching focus is on responding to the arts. In order to do this we need to learn about the language of the arts and the arts elements, Line Texture, Tone, Shape & Form, Space and of cource colour!So this term has been one where I have been doing activities and looking at art works that promote discussion using the arts elements.
Over the last couple of weeks colour has been in the spotlight. Although swimming has meant there has been a bit of disruption to the timetable, most classes have had time to play a game or two or especially the older classes at least look at paint chips from the hardware shop. We mached colours, contrasted colours, grouped colours and were amused by the fanciful names they have been labled with.

Middle and upper primary classes produced their own colour wheels and mixed their own colours to create 'recipes' for future reference. These will go into their Visual Diaries so they can find them if they would like to mix a colour for another project and check how they made them.

I asked them to come up with their own descriptive or fanciful names just as the paint companies do.

I love this one ....grot splot! (I don't know why these photos refuse to sit the right way round but anyway grot splot is now on the left )

The juniors plus year 4 have been finding out about primary, secondary and warm and cool colours.
Here's a fun video clip about colours and colour mixing that I have been showing the kids.

To help frmember these we made Hot Dogs and Cool Cats.

In my science & Maths class I thought it was a good opportunity to look at light and colour and the kids used prisms to create their own rainbows. Then we made posters introducing ROY G BIV who helps us remember the order of the colours in the rainbow.

Happy New Chinese Year!

In this year of celebrations and in making links with the new Australian History curriculum last week we did activities using Chinese New Year as a focus. We discussed what types of things people did to celebrate this event and then why it is we know about Chinese New Year here in Australia. This lead to a bit of a discussion about immigration at different levels from year one upwards!

Yr 1 & some yr 2 classes made Paper chain dragons.

 

The Yr 3 classes made Folded paper spring dragons.

These 'puppets' were so much fun to play with! And obviously pretty special!

 

(PS: One older sister told me that her brother slept with his dragon on his bed! Cute!)

Those kids in mixed year 2/3 classes had the choice of either type of dragon- most chose to go with the paper chain one. I think it was because the paper chain ones could be made really long and this became a great game of measuring the length of their dragons to see who had managed to make the longest one with their two coloured paper squares. Maths meets art!

The year fours used line to create drawings of Chinese dragons. They had to include lines that showed movement and create patterns with lines rather than colouring in areas of their drawing.

Welcome to a new school year.... OR...Whate happened to term three??? What about term Four?

We had a a server upgrade on our computer at school and as a result I am now no longer able to access this blog at school. This can be remedied but hasn't been a big priority so it hasn't been resolved just yet- a far more pressing problem is a lack of power in my art room this week!  Fortunately I have power in the top half of the room, lights and air con work- well when I say the air con works it runs...it is evaporative and is not terribly effective, but better than nothing in this heat!

SO anyway the blog took a back burner in the last term with Art Blast, reports and an end of year stall at our local farmers market! I am hoping to ensure I update this on a regular basis to share what we are doing as the year goes by, making a habit of downloading images at home from my school camera or onto an external hard drive (I am in trouble for using up too much space on the school computer Ooops! ) or make sure I can update the blog at school- I'll move it up the priority list.

We started the school year off looking at a group this group of art works.

The kids were asked to see if they could find what they all had in common. 

Very cleverly most classes were able to find that each artwork used the arts elements of line, shape/form, colour, texture, tone. But they were quite surprised to find that all of these works were completed in 1913, exactly 100 years ago. What surprised them most was that some of them look very modern even though 100 years ago is a very long time ago and is "the olden days". This prompted some discussion about how long people have been making art works and what that looks like on the time line.

This year will be a big one for us as we celebrate our centenary. Hence the 100 year old art works! ;) We have some great things planned.  I will be making bunting with all the classes to help decorate and make the school festive on our open day in term 4. The idea for this came from the suggestion that we make a quilt and each child make a square. The problem with quilts is where do they go once they are done? They hang in the library for years getting dusty and then someone comes along and wants to get rid of it and then where does it go? Although bunting uses a traditional technique of sewing and applique it is also very very 'now' they are popping up in magazines and on Pinterest by the dozen! They can be strung up for the spacial celebration and pulled down and stored in large plastic zip lock bags until the next event and brought out for that event. So the art works have a real purpose- I love it when that happens. So, bunting made using technology that is old and then for something new, very new!

I managed to organise something very contemporary with VJZoo working with us to create a very modern projection artwork onto the roof top of our eastern wing on our open day celebration. I'm really looking forward to that!