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This year Hendrix participated in International Dot Day 2017. On this day each year, artists all over the world celebrate the creativity and inspiration found in Peter H. Reynolds' book The Dot. The Dot is the story of a young artist named Vashti who thinks she can't draw. Her teacher tries to help her by saying "Just make a mark and see where it takes you!" Vashti angrily jabs her pencil into her paper, leaving a black dot behind. The next time Vashti comes to Art, she sees her black dot hanging on the wall! She says to herself "Hmmph. I can make a better dot than that!" And she does! Her teacher's encouragement and support was all Vashti needed to be successful. By the end of the story, Vashti has taken on the role of teacher, and the book ends with her helping a little boy learn to "make his mark!" The book has inspired artists all over the world, and each year in September, International Dot Day is celebrated! This year over 10 million artists in over 170 countries were part of the celebration- and our Hendrix artists were included in that number! Hendrix artists celebrated by making their own dot-inspired artworks. These paintings will be on display at our school during the month of September. I am looking forward to this being a new tradition for our school! After we finished our paintings, students loved hearing this message of inspiration from The Dot author Peter H. Reynolds! It was almost like getting to meet him ourselves! We are already excited to celebrate International Dot Day 2018!
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I wanted to take a minute to explain the behavior expectations for when your children are in the Art room. I always express to students that the Art room is a shared space, and about 700 students use it each week. This means we have to make good use of the limited time we have together and make each class period as productive as possible, as well as take good care of our materials and equipment so everything will be ready for the next group of kids! Each classroom in our school begins the year by developing a list of expectations called an "Essential Agreement." This is IB terminology for behaviors each member of our class agrees are necessary for a functional and pleasant place to learn. I ask each student to sign their name to our Art Room Essential Agreement. This signature creates a contract between each student and the other members of the class. I explain to the students that it's like making a promise. When misbehaviors occur, I can remind each student of the promise he or she made to follow our expectations. In each class session, I select one student to honor for doing a particularly good job. Their reward is a cupcake sticker. Let me explain what cupcakes have to do with making art! It's all based on this rubric: I explain to students that making Art is like decorating cupcakes. Sometimes students turn in work that is like the first cupcake on this poster- it's not even finished. The next category is what we call the "sloppy cupcake". The student made minimal effort and did not take pride in their work. I describe the third cupcake as being "fine". It's finished, all the requirements have been met, but it's nothing special. This represents artwork that's good, but not great. The final category on the rubric is our "fancy cupcake." THIS represents the kind of work I'm looking for- work that goes above and beyond expectations! This quality of work is what I reward with a matching cupcake sticker. So if you see your child bring home a sticker like this, understand that it represents a job very well done! It's important that children understand that this reward is NOT based on talent or skill, it's earned through EFFORT. All students, even those who struggle with Art and may not have a lot of natural talent, will earn a cupcake sticker at least once each year. I make sure that every student in the class is honored one time before any student earns a second sticker. As you may know, Hendrix participates in the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program. The "PBIS" philosophy encourages good choices in our students. PBIS supports the use of a common language between all areas of a school. That common language is evident in what we call our "PACK expectations". We ask students to be "Part of the PACK" here at school. PACK is an acronym for being principled, appreciative, cooperative, and knowledgeable. Each area of our school has a system of expectations using this vocabulary. Our PACK expectations for Special Area classes are described in this chart: Each time students attend a Special Area class, the teacher records their behavior on this chart and returns it to the classroom teacher. This helps us all maintain high standards for our students' behavior in all areas of the school. Each Special Area teacher tracks the points earned by each homeroom class, and the classes work toward earning reward days. In Art, our reward days involve fun activities like playdough, painting with shaving cream, or drawing outside with sidewalk chalk! Occasionally students fail to follow the expected behaviors in the Art room. When that happens, students first receive a warning. I keep cards with a stop sign picture on them, and if a student is making a bad choice (such as talking when they're not supposed to, or mistreating supplies, or not following directions) I place a stop sign card on that student's desk. This is a visual reminder that they need to "stop what they are doing and make a better choice," as the card reads. Usually this is all it takes to get a student back on track! If the problem behavior continues, that student will lose the privilege of making Art for the remainder of the day, and will instead complete one of these "Better Choices Sheets." This form is designed to help a student think about what happened and realize why it was a problem, as well as give them a chance to explain what was going on and how the problem started. I have two versions of Better Choices Sheets- one for older students, and one for younger kids with pictures to circle instead of writing a sentence. The form has a place for me to describe to parents what happened, and asks the parent to sign the form and have their student return it to me the next day. Fortunately these Better Choices Sheets are not a common occurrence here in our Art room- students would much rather be participating in making Art! Parents, if you ever have a question or concern about our routines or expectations in the Art room, please let me know! Kindergarten students have been learning about patterns in art. We learned that patterns are made from repeating shapes, and that they are often found in nature but can be man-made too. To start off this unit, we looked at the book Spotty, Stripy, Swirly: What Are Patterns? Students' next task was to find images of patterns in magazines. I told them they were going on a "pattern hunt" to cut out as many examples of patterns as they could find. This was our first time using scissors this year, so it was a chance for me to assess each students' experience with cutting and to encourage proper grip of the scissors. The next day of the lesson involved students recreating a pattern out of paper. Students chose a black-and-white version of a simple pattern and then had to cut out those shapes and arrange them on a background. Each student had to interpret their pattern for themselves instead of copying an example, so this was a pretty challenging project. It was a lot to expect of kindergarten students after only a few weeks of school! I was so pleased and surprised with how well most students accomplished the task! I always try to have my kindergartners paint on the very first day of Art. I know that might seem like a lot to expect, since many of them have never been in school and have never even held a paintbrush (some not even a pencil!) but I like that it makes their first art experience a memorable and engaging one. This year, I introduced the painting process with my new favorite book- "To Be An Artist". The book celebrates all different types of art forms. It teaches that making art is not always just drawing, painting, and sculpting- playing instruments, singing, dancing, weaving, sewing, acting, and even creative writing are all ways of making art! My favorite thing about the book is that it is written with a global perspective. The images from the book are of children from all over the world! After seeing the children in the book making art, we were ready to make our own artworks. My goal for this lesson was really just to get a paintbrush in each child's hand- I wanted to give them the experience of painting, rather than focus on making a finished product. Students worked with a partner to make large collaborative paintings that we added to each day. By the end of the week, and after multiple painting sessions, lots of little hands had contributed to each artwork! Here are some of the finished paintings- they are so bright and beautiful! Welcome back to school! It has been a great first few weeks. Very busy, but great! We started the year with a solar eclipse-themed artwork, to celebrate the "Great American Eclipse" that passed over us on August 21st. We started by looking at some artworks inspired by previous eclipses. We discussed how each artist interpreted the eclipse in a unique way and with a variety of materials. Representing an eclipse through a pen-and-ink drawing. And a painting. With stained glass. Wood-working techniques. And quilting! Students then created their own interpretation of the eclipse using a chalk pastel technique. Here are our "Solar Eclipse Silhouettes"! ![]() I love the detail this student added- a drawing of himself wearing his eclipse glasses!! I wanted to share the beautiful butterflies kindergartners have just finished! This is our last project for the year, and it supports K5's current science unit on life cycles and how animals grow and change in different ways. The kids have already learned about the butterfly's life cycle with their classroom teachers, so we started by looking at some examples of butterfly wing patterns and coloring. We talked about what symmetry means and examined how a butterfly's wings are exactly the same on both sides. To create their own butterflies, students started by tracing half of a butterfly shape on one side of their papers. If our time hadn't been so short, I would have had students draw their own wings, but I needed the lesson to fit in the two weeks I had left with kids and tracing the beginning step is an easy way to make that happen. Next, students used pencils to sketch some simple shapes inside their butterfly's wings. Then came the messy part! Students traced over their pencil lines using liquid glue that I tinted black. This was a real challenge for most kindergartners- most of them had never dispensed glue from a bottle before, and learning to squeeze just the right amount is tricky! After all the glue was applied, the next step was to fold the paper and rub gently to transfer the design to the other side. This is how we created symmetry! Then students gently peeled the two sides apart to reveal the finished butterfly design! When students returned the next week, it was time to paint! Each student chose two compatible colors to paint their butterfly. And here are some of the finished butterflies! My plan is to keep these paintings over the summer, and then display them at the beginning of the new school year. I did a formal drawing assessment with this year's kindergartners. The goal was to track their growth in drawing people. In the third week of school, I had each kindergarten student draw themselves. I didn't show any examples or give any instruction, since I wanted to see what each student could do on their own. I used the information from this drawing assessment to plan drawing lessons for the rest of the year.
Several months later, I asked students to draw themselves again. They have certainly made a lot of progress! I was amazed by the extreme amounts of growth some students showed. It's incredible to see the two drawings side-by-side! Here are some examples- the first drawing was made in August, and the second was made by the same child at the end of March. This was a brand-new lesson I developed for kindergarten. It's similar to content I teach to older grades, and I was unsure if kindergartners would be able to grasp the abstract thinking required. I think they did very well! This activity is meant to support K5's Symbols unit. They studied symbols in math (like addition or subtraction signs) symbols in our community (such as road signs) and even symbols in our culture, like the bald eagle and the Statue of Liberty! In Art, our objective was to explore ways that art communicates ideas without using words, just like symbols are a way of representing ideas. This is a big concept for kindergarten brains to grasp! We started by comparing these two artworks: These two paintings have very similar content- both features musicians- but the emotion in each painting is completely opposite! In our whole-group discussion, we identified that the differences in the artworks' moods come from both the COLOR (one painting is a dull, blue, tone, which communicates sadness and despair, while the other is bright, cheerful reds and pinks) as well as the ENERGY (the guitarist's body language is sad- his head and body are drooping- but the jazz musicians are standing tall and looking up! You can almost see them dancing!) We looked a little further into the idea of energy as communication through this video of a dancer using her body to portray feelings. I asked to students to look at how her body moved and try to identify how she may be feeling. This next video was the students' favorite part of the lesson! They loved getting to see familiar characters, yet analyzing them in a new way! We watched each character's part of this "Inside Out" video separately. After watching the part introducing Joy, I asked the students to think about what her body was doing- dancing, jumping, and flipping! Then each student painted a line representing that feeling- their lines were dancing, jumping, and flipping too! The next character was Sadness- we compared her entrance to Joy's. Sadness enters the screen by plodding slowly along- no jumping and flipping for her! So the students painted slow, even, lines. Next was Anger- we watched the video to see his harsh, bold, slashing movements, and the students replicated this in the lines they painted. The character of Disgust was really hard! Fear was tricky as well- we imagined that he was so scared he was shaking, and so the students made nervous, quivering, lines. To finish, students chose colors they thought matched each feeling and painted the white spaces of their artwork. Most students chose yellow to represent happiness, blue to show sadness, and red for anger. The other emotions were a little more subjective! Overall, this activity allowed for lots of critical thinking, and I'm already excited to teach it again next year! Today was the first time I tried this activity with kids, and I loved it! It is great for building fine motor skills and encouraging muscle development.
Each student arranged foam blocks on a large piece of paper. They used markers to draw around these obstacles, not ever letting their marker touch them. By doing this, students are forced to use big arm movements, instead of just moving the wrist and fingers as required by most writing and drawing. This type of whole-body movement is an important skill for artists to have, and will be helpful in the activity we'll do next week which explores expressive mark-making! Students stood up to draw today, which helps to encourage the use of larger muscle groups. They drew repeated paths around the obstacles, moving in whichever direction felt natural. After a few minutes, we switched it up-- I told students to draw backwards, and try to retrace their paths in the opposite direction. Then, to increase the challenge even more, I had students switch to drawing with their non-dominant hand! This was a fun activity, with lots of skill-building, and definitely one I'll use again! Kindergarten artists have really focused on drawing themselves this year. Their self-portraits were the focus of K5's Art Show this past February. Up to this point, all of the self-portraits have been about how people look on the outside. But in this lesson, students explored making art to share what's on the inside!
Kindergarten is beginning a brand-new IB unit about symbols and how they are used in our society. I asked students to think of symbols that represented themselves. Students spent the first day of this project drawing their favorite things- favorite colors, foods, movie characters, places to visit, sports teams, etc. They also drew symbols representing their favorite thing about school and what they wanted to be when they grew up. On day two of the project, students cut out each shape and glued them to an outline of a head that I provided. On the final day of work, students painted the remaining spaces of the head. We then cut out the finished paintings and mounted them to a background. |
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