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!

What happened to term Three????

Goodness the time has flown past! This term has been a busy one. One of the highlights has been taking a group of 57 children to the Art Gallery of WA to see the Picasso to Warhol exhibition. It was very successful with both children and parent helpers saying they really enjoyed it and would love to go again. I can see an annual event coming on! 

This year I have been focusing on well known modern artists as a link to arts in society outcomes and to fit in with this exhibition. The kids are beginning to recognise the names and styles of some of the artists we have looked at. The gallery staff all said they could tell from the children's responses that they had been exposed to a proper art education with an art specialist. This is a huge compliment because these ladies see many, many school groups over the year. So well done kids!!!

I personally get a trill to hear kids say things like a comment from a year one child when I showed them a piece of work by Paul Klee. "That looks a bit like Picasso's because it is kind of brownish and all shapes" Indeed it did have some similarities to the works of Picasso that I had shown them a few weeks previously, it gave me goose bumps!

On the excursion we even had a chance to do an activity in the Art Gallery Studio.

We created our own Cubist style still life drawings, just like Picasso.

We have been working furiously trying to get organised for a whole school photography exhibition on September 30th at the Farmer's Market Spring Open Day.

 I have tried to do different things with several classes in order to familiarise the kids with how our new cameras work. Our WONDERFUL LOVELY P&C donated a class set of 12 cameras to the art room.

Some junior classes, especially year ones were given the cameras and asked to photograph some thing they found interesting in the playground. I gave them little instruction as I just wanted to let them go and see what they found interesting. (What is it with boys and toilets?!?!)

Year 2/3's were asked to photograph somewhere they liked to play.

Year 3's chose a little toy and used this as a subject for their photo in order to make them think about what it was they were photographing and have them get in really close to the subject.

Yr 4/5's took photos of collections.

One class had to do drawings that interacted with their hands in some way.

Finally the 5/6 and 6/7 class had a 'Scavenger hunt'. They had to find examples of things like 'rule of thirds' 'leading lines' following instruction about what makes a good photo.

Now I'm going to try to put photos in here again and hope that it doesn't do the same thing as the last post with the photos being so huge!

Some more sewing. (Fixed the large photo problem! It was so very simple really !)

Here's a bit of a gallery showing some of the sewing projects completed from the Picasso printmaking activites from several classes in years 4 to 7. Some classes did potato printing others did collograph printmaking. Both classes had to add stitches in order to decorate their fabric.