A Fortnight of Art and More

Feelings

This last week began with our Monday morning session with Ms. Dee. We have explored ten different feelings. In small groups, the children talk about their current feeling while giving reasons why they feel that way. Following are a few of the clips and songs we have viewed accompanying the lessons. 

Hi Five - Feelings

The Lonely Pumpkin

I'm sorry - with Mandy Manners

A World of Art

We have begun exploring ideas to help us answer the question - 
What is Art? We viewed a variety of images as a grade level to expose the children to the different forms of art. As a large group, we encouraged the children to talk about what they could see and their ideas of art forms and what materials may have been used for the different art creations. Later in class groups we viewed the images in print form and sorted them into categories. We discovered that art comes in different forms and sizes, some examples were that it could be carved or molded, painted, drawn, built or photographed and most interesting was that it could also be in the form of food. 

Art and Artists

Using the story 'The Hungry Caterpillar' as a provocation, we looked at how art can tell a story and how Eric Carl is not only an author but also an artist. We viewed some close-up images of his artwork together with Ms. Karyns class on the big screen. In addition, we took a quick look at the collage art techniques used by Henri Matisse and had discussions about how the two artists use their work to show their understanding of the world. 

After our discussions, we experimented with Matisse's ideas. 

The following day we had a gallery walk of our work. The children were encouraged to select artworks they wondered about or liked to expose them to articulating their perspectives. This lead us also to talk about how some artwork has a recognizable form and others are abstract. 

Art and Facts from the Real World

We continued to piggy-back on 'The Hungry Caterpillar' story and look at how Eric Carl has used art to share his understanding of the life cycle of a butterfly.

source: screenshots from http://www.teachertube.com/video/the-very-hungry-caterpillar-178047

Viewing a time lapse life cycle of a butterfly

We recognized that the stages from being an egg to becoming a butterfly had an order and talked about how the order followed a sequence. The children discovered that one thing had to happen before the next. 

To put that into context for the children they worked on creating a caterpillar art piece using a sequence of steps.

Source for this artwork can be found on http://www.twinkl.co.uk/

Art Studio Time

On Friday Ms. Elaine, Ms. Karyn, Ms. Dana, and Ms. Leigh collaborated to introduce the children to a few other art forms. The children explored origami, weaving, sculpture and the drama.