November Nature Detectives and more!!!!

Bookoween came to the Art Garden 

Ask your Grade 1 students which artist Mrs Kirk and Miss Flowers  have portrayed in our costumes ?

HINT!!!!

Reception One 

Nature Detectives 

Continue their tireless search for pattern and shape! Using our Secret Garden as a place to seek out patterns and shapes, we began a conversation about the shape of something we see all around us......Leaves

First of all we collected ideas of what we could remember about leaves......

Preliminary memories

Then we planned to reality check our memories and go out into the Secret Garden to investigate, we planned to guide our attention by looking for certain specifics:

Size, shape, colour, edges, lines, and patterns.

After a quiet guided walk, we came back to the atrium and drew what we had seen and noticed, we called these our Memory drawings.

As you can see we gathered much visual data and peoples memories were very good, look at the shapes and patterns that we found above !

The week after we came back to art and talked about ways that we get our ideas when we draw, we established that we could use our :

Imagination

Memory

or our eyes.....Observation

This day was all about how to use our eyes.....and as a way to gather information we used our Magic Finger to trace around the leaf, gathering the outline, and size to guide our hand when we came to draw.

Then we prepared to start drawing the shapes we can actually really see......

Just look at what your children have observed here....

People were able try out all many strategies to try and attain these new shapes.

The next week we recapped and decided we were ready for a "Nature Detective Challenge"  We looked at the enlargement of these three leaves on our big screen for 1 minute and then discussed similarities and differences, revealing how much we can absorb in just one minute!!!

We then practiced identifying and naming the component parts together ......

This what we found....what a lot of detail and just look at that pattern made by the leaf veins ( having established that those are the water pipes for the leaf) 

Next we were ready to tackle this complex leaf pattern for ourselves, so we used our "Nature Detective Equipment " along with Magic finger to investigate.

Then the drawing could begin......

Just look at all the interpretations of our leaves......so much detail

These are being outlined, ready for watercolour next week....

Watch this space

Grade 1
Searching out designs with Klimt

You may recall that Grade one kids were using paintings of Adele Blockbauer by Gustav Klimt to study pattern and design, they then used the painting "The Kiss" as inspiration for a self portrait.

So we have painted our shape and now the time came to put our Observational Skills into practice while we designed the gorgeous magical clothing using our Klimt segments.

 Looking very carefully, great observation!

Building up the design in layers

Then using the special " Drawing with Scissors method" people have begin to create the luscious clothing you see right here......again, building the design in layers and using Klimts concept of same colour camouflage to select colour choices.

 

By the time you see this project one more time you will be able to recognise your own child 

Grade Two
Circles within Circles


Having grown and completed our central segments of our Mandala's

  
We branched out, continuing to count in 8's and continuing to use the points of the compass to guide us.beginning with our 8 main shapes then allowing our "Design Brain" to embellish each of the 8 shapes in an identical manner. Once again observing children engaged in this repetitive pattern making, we watched as they became completely absorbed and melted quietly into the rhythm of the process. Very calming and meditative.


Using various colours of paint pens to decorate each shape, searching for complementary shapes to fill the right spaces, balancing the weight of thick and thin lines, contrasting dark shades and colours that add light and vibrancy to their design.





This project really enables your children to surrender to the flow and all students no matter what their confidence level with handling fine motor skills, have found ways to be highly successful......just look at the results so far !!!

Watch this space for final finished mandalas next month

in

The Magic Dot

from
Mrs Kirk and Miss Flowers