Wednesday, September 20, 2017

August Arty Adventures in Lower Primary

Hello and welcome to the Magical Dot! We, Ms. Lang and Mrs. Kirk, are thrilled to welcome Lower Primary children to our beautiful, new school in Repulse Bay!


Our art rooms are becoming more colourful everyday with the creativity and energy of our Lower Primary artists. Now christened with paint and glitter, the art rooms have already helped host some Artsy Adventures in the month of August.

What have we been up to?


Like the famous painter, Wassily Kandinsky, said, 'Everything starts with a dot.' All grade levels began this year by making their every own dot. The 800 dots created will also help our school celebrate International Dot Day which on September 15th. From Kandinsky to the character, Vashti, in Peter Reynolds, 'The Dot', students have started the year by making their mark on the school! You can see some photo's of Dot day at the end of this post...



Reception 1 Artists have been exploring Colour with the help of a friend....


We are so excited to be teaching R1’s for the first time this year! R1 budding artists have been learning about all the important areas in the art room and classroom protocols. You can ask them if they know what ‘Mona Lisa Quiet' means or ‘where you put your sausages’ when you stand around the middle table. After reading Peter Reynolds book ‘The Dot', R1 children created dots that were inspired by music, like Kandinsky. Working in pairs, our artists listened to different types of music and used oil pastels to create lines, patterns, and marks to respond to the rhythm and beats of the music.



Our magical dot journey continued with our mischievous friend, White Rabbit who helped us discover some new colours. We had an exciting color mixing moment that showed the magic of primary colours changing to secondary colours using inks in glass bottles.

Watch the colours change...

               

Our Reception 2 artists practiced their fine motor skills to drop primary colors paper diffusers to explore color mixing. 


...You can ask children what happened when White Rabbit jumped from the red paint pot  to the yellow paint pot.

Reception 2 Artists have been mixing it up...


We began our colour exploration reading 'Mix It Up" by Henry Tuttle before mixing it up ourselves and exploring primary and secondary colors.




Artists then applied their skills to color mixing where they explored and mixed primary colors to create different greens, organise, and purples on their own white circle paper palette. 




They even came up with new names for their colours... Golden Peach, Pixie Dust, Rainbow Yellow, Marshmallow green and rose petal purple were amongst a few... 


 Reception 2 students did a great job washing palettes and tables, cleaning brushes, and folding aprons after each lesson. You can ask your children how to make a color lighter or what happened with you mix yellow and red, or red and blue.


Grade 1 Artists have been wondering about the artist Kandinsky... 


Grade 1 Artists have begun with a paper shape collage inspired by the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky. But first we began our year with a little paint joy.... painting patterned papers which were cut into shapes and used for the Kandinsky collage.




 After preparing colourful backgrounds our Grade 1 artist's then explored the work of Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky. 


We noticed in his artwork that he like to create centre of interest - a focal point, we called it the the 'party point'. 


Now it was our turn...we started with a big shape...


and created a 'busy spot', by overlapping shapes of different sizes and colors. 


Our Artists also learned how to guide your eyes to the 'party point'  by adding stepping stones, pathway lines and 'pointers' and how important it is to think about your space. 


We finished our project with a special Kandinsky song created by the lyrical legend Ms Lang.
You can ask your children how they created a 'busy spot' or look at the artwork of Kandinsky and ask them why there are 'stepping stones' and 'pathways'. 

Grade 2 artists have been growing their design brain with Mandalas....

Grade 2 design legends have been making mindful marks by growing magical mandalas in art class. Using a compass as their guide, they they have been creating designs inside an eight point circle by drawing shapes, creating patterns and adding detail to each mark they make.

Student painted the background of their circle with watercolour paints, drew designs in pencil and then traced over the marks with marker. 

They added added 8 shapes that pointed to each of the compass points...ask your children why we use the compass? What does a compass do?


Then they decorated their shapes and added Mr Fill and Mr Jump...they added more decorations creating complex designs by layering simple patterns. 


This was just a tryout....Now that they have mastered the magical mandala formula we will work towards making a mandala on canvas using acrylic paint and paint pens. You can ask students what the is Magical Number of the Mandala and where you would put a 'fill' shape.


DOT DAY...

We celebrated Dot Day on the 15th September...take a look at all the gorgeous dots your children created....






Happy Dot Day!!!!

Dotfully yours 
Mrs Kirk and Ms.  Lang 


Monday, June 5, 2017

May Meanderings

Hi Everyone
Well after our amazing month with Francesco, we eventually returned our artroom activities and routine! All of your students continues to nurture their creative muses and bring forth all kinds of stunning creations!
R2 Artistes 
Following their garden studies, we read this beautiful book by Eric Carle.
In preparation for making our own garden we painted some skies on real life artists canvases, asking such questions as:
How does the sky tell us the time of day?
How does the sky tell us the weather ?
The following week we created some papers in the style of Eric Carle using an array of mystery objects to make journeys on the page 
 
Then we were ready to create our own gardens in the Eric Carle style.
Look at our gorgeous images !
The artroom is blooming all around us now! 

Grade 2 Creative Angels 
Grade 2's have been reading a famous old Chinese story from long long ago.
The story of the Willow Pattern Plate
you can read the whole study in this book.
You can watch this video that we loved as well:

We began by sketching and drawing, to get to know the details
Then each class made a segment of the image for our great big mural 
       
 
Until we were ready to assemble the pieces into a glorious mural for our new LP school campus in Repulse Bay.
An amazing tribute to their very careful drawing  ! 
 Grade One presented the completed Willow Pattern murals to our lovely Chinese teachers, who were so surprised and delighted to  see the new pieces that will hang in their very own area, and all of the children going to Chinese will see them as well.
 The Chinese teachers were very happy !

Grade 2 
The Big Beetle hunt! 
Remember our scientific drawings that we made earlier this year ? Well because we had learned to look at the insect from above, the side and underneath, we were able to translate that knowledge and make ourselves a 3d insect! 
The models were made.....
         
 The insects were painted and brought to life ! 
   
Then we used special luminous paint to give the special insect effect !
Then at last we added our details.
Then we let everyone see our insects, by placing the in the Secret Garden 
All the others students came to our pop UP Art show including plenty of Middle Schoolers too! 

Last of all your Grade 2 students created their own imaginative 2d insects, look at their careful painting. 
All in all, a fabulous end to the artistic year! 
So thanks for reading the Magic Dot and we will see you again next year for more creative adventures 

Artfully Yours
Miss Flowers and Mrs Kirk 
LP Artroom