A flock of feathered friends

All the children from year 1to 5 are working on a sculpture unit using paper mâché as a technique.

The year ones are making simple birds using folded paper plates and card triangles for beaks.

After making several layers of news paper and tissue they used patterend paper and feathers to decorate their forms.

I made nests by scrunching paper bags down -they thought I was very clever. Little kids are so good for ones self esteem - unless you make the error of asking them to guess how old you are!

The year threes are making animals by joining simple forms like spheres made from newspaper or cylinders etc to make cute animals or aliens.

The 4s and 5s have been challenged to create more complex forms by joining a variety of materials to make "Jub Jub Birds" to fit their unit in the class on poetry or figures from early australian colonial days to link in with their history unit in class.

The room looks a bit messier than usual as it is full of recycled junk that is being transformed into art works.

art club.

 On Tuesdays I don't have duty so I open the art studio for "Art Club". It is an opportunity for kids to catch up on work they may have missed due to absences or from falling behind if they work too slowly (or get too distracted talking to their friends! ) It is also a chance for those kids who love all things arty to spend some time playing with or exploring materials and their ideas.

Some days I have two or three kids sometimes I've had 50+ with kids spilling onto the verandah using chalks and colouring pencils. 

One young lady needed a prop for a dance recital and needed some advice on how to recreate Audry 2 for a dance they will be doing to the Little Shop of Horrors song. I've been coaching her and a willing band of helpers through the construction and decoration of her model. It is so nearly finished!

the test will come when they dance around with it! But it looks fantastic!

Well done girls

history links

A couple of classes are looking at early settlement times in Australia. 

To link in with their classroom theme I modified the paper mâché project I'd planned for these two yr 3/4 classrooms. Rather than make animals we have opted to create some characters that may have been around in early colonial times. 

We researched some images of paintings and early photos of those times and made notes in our visual diaries using sketches and some phrases or adjectives.

Today we used bottles, card, pipe cleaners and newspaper to create armatures (frames) for our sculptures that will be covered with paper mâché next week.

Some are making bushrangers, others swagmen a couple are making soldiers and there are quite a few ladies with bonnets and parasols! 

Captuing Motion

My yr6/7 classes have been exploring photography as a way of capturing figures in motion and as a way to collect images that can be used to develop into a painting that shows motion.

We started by looking at Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending Stairs" 

I had this on the interactive white board with no information to give them any clues to what it was about. I used the VTS questioning to get them thinking. I also asked then to think of 4 adjectives to describe the painting in order to support a need in our school to develop vocabulary for improvement in literacy. We discussed the artist and what influenced him and this led us to look at the photographic work of Eadweard Muybridge. It was interesting to see how this man's artistic endeavors over 100 years ago has relevance to the entertainment we enjoy today. His experiments in capturing movement paved the way for motion pictures!




Then it was time to get the cameras out and start taking pictures. The children took photos of each other leaping into the air and creatin interesting shapes with their body.

These have been uploaded to the computers and this week we will select an image to work with and develop it into a painting.

time to explore and up skill

In the last few months I have discovered an iPad app that is designed to help teachers centralise their timetable and daily work pad along with class lists and records, it's called idocio.

I've been concentrating on using that and it has taken a bit of time to figure out the best way to set it up for my situation as a specialist teacher rather than a class teacher. but I have to say it is fantastic as a means of capturing the kids work to record their progress with photos. previously I would photograph the kids work then I would have to upload them to the computer then I would have to try to see who's work was who's from the tiny wee thumbnails and then sort them into folders for each class and then for each child, pretty time consuming! 

with this new app I tap on the class list then on the child's name then the camera icon and take the photo then with iPad magic the photo is stored against the child's name!!! So although it took me a while to decide what columns I needed to keep the kind of records I require - having done it one way then completely redoing it for 20 classes I think I've found a way that will work for me and it will be a worthwhile time saver in the end!

However that means that now all my photos are goin onto the iPad and I've been used to doing my blog on the computer now I have to use the blogger app to do my updates now. fortunately it's holidays and I can play with the new (for me) technology and see if I can make more regular updates of what we are up to in the Pally art studio.

Finally those classes working on their printmaking textile project have finished and most of them have pencil cases to store their art studio supplies in or they have created something a bit more exciting like hackney sacks or tshirts!

We've looked at the cultural significance of aboriginal art from simple sharing of dreamtime stories for the junior

 through to the use of stories to educate about the environment and the use of symbols to communicate meaning with the upper grades using the art of the western desert people as inspiration for their own work. The older children looked at the use of symbols and created some of their own for their own life rather than purely copying those from aboriginal tradition.

We have painted 

cute, simplified, geometric, comical cats 

tonal studies based on china plates 

plus explored, researched and sketched

then painted mythical creatures 

that became 3D clay pieces

and made toys that fly off the end of a straw!

and simple puppets

We've made collages 

done some drawing

It's been a busy few months!

And it's been fun!

Sew Sew

my year threes, fours and fives are busily working on their textile project which started some time ago. We developed a design and made a print on fabric. We have been exploring and learning different types of embroidery stitches. I have this on my interactive white board for them to refer to along with a set of sewing cards for a range of other stitches if they want. My plan is to make some little movies demonstrating how to do each stitch so that the children can go to the board and by touching the illustration they are given an individual instruction when they need it - I just have to figure out how to do that! ;)

 Each year level has a certain number of different stitches to aim for. 

 Year 3 need to work on the running stitch family of stitches and have a go at stem stitch and one "tricky" stitch if they would like to. 

 

Year fives are expected to be able to do the running stitches and stem stitch plus one of the tricky ones. I have set these targets because I realised that a lot of the kids were saying "This is hard" and giving up really quickly when challenged by something that wasn't really hard but actually just required some concentration and a little perseverance.

 

 Having said this within each class there are some kids who do have extra challenges to face whether it be physical or just down to a lack of confidence or experience with a certain skill, so several children have their own specific goals that I will negotiate with them along the way.

 

My father was an artist and a teacher also, he worked in many contexts - as I have done but at one stage he worked with young kids with disabilities at Rocky Bay, some of these children were born without arms or legs so for an art teacher this was a big challenge, but this didn't stop my father from looking for the positives finding ways to see what they could do rather than focusing on what they couldn't do. 

 

This stuck in my impressionable young mind and to this day I try as much as I can to help children see beyond what they can't do to find ways of doing things that works for them - whether it means insisting that they have just one more go at threading that needle for themselves 

 

or finding ways for them to hold a tool in a way that works for them 

 

or finding something that might support them and make the job just a little easier. 

 

The look on their faces when they actually achieve something for themselves is priceless.

The photos used here are from my year 4/5 class.