A Journey Back in Time

Students in Grade 2 journeyed back through time to see the art of the ancient people of the Lascaux caves in this video:   Lascaux Cave: Virtual Tour

They created their own art with coloured chalk and guessed why the cave people made art with their hands and painted animals. This is what they thought...

Cave people made art to...

• to tell a story. 
• to have fun! Maybe they got bored of catching animals so they made art. 
• so people would remember who they were and that they lived there. 
• to  share feelings.
• because they respected animals. 
• to show where they've been. 
• to show how much they've hunted and eaten.
• to explain what they did and how was their life. 
• to communicate to others. 
• so we can see how they lived in the past. 
• to show what animals lived there. 
• to collaborate and be friends. 
• to communicate
• to show the number of people who stayed in the cave. 
• They used colours to express their feelings. 
• to respect others feelings. 
• because drawing makes you feel happy. 

or

•  maybe they threw real arrows at the animals to pretend to hunt them. 
• maybe they think that when they die, their paintings will come to life. 

Click here for more information about the caves and the people that created this art.

Goal Setting

Finding out what students know in art is a very important way to ensure progress and set appropriate goals. One of the ways that students are self assessing and goal setting this year in art class is through a drawing assessment. Each student in the grades 2-5 classes completed a 10 minute observational drawing of the same subject (a cup of art supplies). They critiqued their work and set goals for observational drawing this year. We will do the same activity later in the year to identify areas of improvement and set new goals.

Marvelous Moving Art

This week in grade 4, students are investigating the work of American artist, Alexander Calder, who has created many beautiful sculptures including his famous mobiles. Today the first class of Grade 4 students studied Calder's use of line, shape and movement so that they could design moving sculptures of their own.

A few reflections:
It was fun to trace the lines of Calder's wire sculptures such as 'Elephant'.
I learned how to use round-nose pliers to bend the wire. It was challenging.
I want to make my work neater next day.
We learned how to handle wires safely.
I loved learning about how easy it is to make beautiful sculptures like these!

Test your observation skills with this puzzle that will introduce you to some other great artists and sculptures! Click the link below.

Find the Sculptures

KG2 Reflections on Art

These KG2 artists shared their art books with each other this week and discussed what they learned this quarter. They then illustrated their learning with permanent marker drawings and painted with watercolour.

Drawing Animals: Geometric Shapes to Organic Shapes

Grade 3 students are busy at work in their home room classes, completing an ecosystems project. To support this end of unit project, students are developing their drawing skills in Visual Art class. Knowing how to observe animals carefully to find shapes will help them to design their comics, murals and dioramas. Take a look at some of their practice drawings. Students all agreed that this lesson was challenging, but everyone felt proud of their accomplishments by the end of class. Great job Grade 3!

Print Making

Wow! What a fun day in Grade 3!

Today, after many lessons of preparation, students finally broke out the brayers and printing ink! After putting the finishing touches (textures such as dots and lines) on their plates, they rolled the ink on their plate and waited eagerly. The final results were "really awesome!" Students tried many combinations of coloured inks and papers to get different effects. In our next class we we will reflect on our work and make a plan for our one final print! Here are some pictures from our session today:

Learning to draw using geometric and organic shapes

This plate is all ready to go!

The camel print


Using the brayer to ink the plate...

Finally! We get to see the print!

Into the drying rack! What colours next?

 THE GALLERY WALK

Dressed in scarves, hats and ties, students walked around our gallery critiquing their prints.  Great artistic language was used by all as we talked about the good things each artist had done.  

Drawing Skills

Students in Grade 3 are preparing for a print making project where they will make relief prints of UAE animals. We are learning some drawing skill before we begin our print. In this lesson, students drew an animal. They talked about what they were thinking when they were drawing. Later, when Mrs Murphy suggested students looked for shapes in the animals, they were able to use the shapes to make very detailed creatures! Here is some of their work: