Specials Update - Art

Hello,

It has been a crazy school year with my luck and technology.  First, my website has had a mind of its own throughout the year losing and not publishing many monthly updates.  Second, my hard drive decided to crash losing a lot of my Kindergarten prized possessions.  Fortunately, our IT Director has found a work around with the hard drive.  It is our hopes that once this problem is fixed we can go back to focusing on the website problems at hand.  In the meantime, I want to be sure that I take this opportunity to pass along information about your child's fun and progress in Specials classes throughout the past Winter months.  The following blog posts will detail each classes curricular activities.

In addition, be sure to check out ASP's blog!

If you have any questions, please be sure to contact your child's Specials teacher directly.  Enjoy!


Fine Arts - Art Update:

December 2013:

I had the absolute pleasure of co-teaching with Ms. Meridith in the Scholar’s Studio as the Cottontail Rabbits began to illustrate their Partner Books. It was so helpful having another teacher in the room to encourage, guide, and inspire the kinders for Willowwind’s biggest project of the year.

Here are the steps of illustration Mr. Ryan presented for the unit:

Start with very light pencil marks to find size and shape.

Add major details (arms, legs, eyes, doors, windows, etc.) using slightly darker marks to find form.

Add minor details (pupils, fingers, textures, hair, fur, flowers, action lines, etc.) using even darker marks.

Finish the drawing by tracing your foreground with a black colored pencil or pen.

Students showed perseverance as they worked on the same project for five sessions. The Cottontails’ hard work and focus paid off, for we finished Partner Books with two more Visual Art days to spare. Not wanting to lose the momentum, I taught the students about watercolor painting before our Painting Block. 

The kindergartners learned that you need watercolor cake trays, a brush, and, water in order to paint with watercolors. I emphasized the importance of working “light-to-dark” when painting with watercolors.  In other words, students were taught to use all of their light colors in their design first (e.g. yellow), move to some darker colors (e.g. blue), and end with your darkest colors (e.g. black.) During my demo and our exploration day, students saw firsthand how dark colors will go over light colors with no problem. However, when the process is reversed, the dark colors overpower any light color that went on top of it.

February 2014:

Partner books are complete! They turned out absolutely wonderful, and it was such a pleasure seeing them being shared with Partner families last Friday. Again, I would like to thank Ms. Meridith with all her help co-teaching with me the last two blocks.

Kindergartners will start the Printmaking block on March 3. This block I plan to teach the kiddos about transfers, stamps, and the importance of reproduction. Before we begin these topics, I will spend two days teaching them about glaze and acrylic paint. My goal is to have all of their ceramics pieces finished by Spring Break.

With that being said, please be aware what your child wears on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday next week. We make a lot of messes in art class! I make sure everyone wears a paint shirt when we paint, but they do not guarantee clean clothes. I suggest wearing clothes that can get colorful, or bringing a change of clothes to school on all Art days, but the week of March 3-7 especially.

Questions?  Contact Ryan at ryanb@willowwind.org.