David Edgar-plastic art sculpture
Peabody Essex Museum- Trash Menagerie exhibit
Miwa Koizumi- plastic jellyfish
Louise Philbrick- Portland area artist
Haute nature blog- eco art section
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National Geographic – Human footprint
Portland’s own Riverside Recycling – check out the video on single sort recycling
We are about to begin a wild and loud and environmentally friendly venture in our art room! Mere junk will become fabulous sound makers. In preparation for our visit to Scrap Arts in February, we will be making instruments out of recycled materials and then fancying them up a bit.
I have been doing a lot of searching on the internet and in bookstores for great resources. Here are some links to sites of interest:
New York Philharmonic Kid Zone
Exploratorium and Peter Whitehead
Exploratorium Music exhibits and activities
Experimental Musical Instruments
Rhythm web- homemade percussion
Oliver Dicicco- inventor of instruments
Portland Ovations study guide and info on Scrap Arts
Jorge Gonzalez- guiro example at 2:09 minutes
These are some of the wonderful examples of kindergarteners’ use of blending colors with oil and chalk pastels.
The birds were created with oil pastel and the peacock feathers were created with chalk pastels.
Enjoy!
Detail of the hand mural by first and second graders hanging near the office
We talked about using a variety of line, solid black and white shapes, and texture shapes. Students were shown mendhi designs from India to get them thinking about intricate designs.
The full mural
detail of third grade mural
students had to change a letter of their name into something- an object, person or animal, or place
We had some very creative metamorphosis!
The full mural by third graders
detail of the geometric shapes mural by fourth and fifth graders
Students were assigned either a circle, square or triangle. If they had a circle, they could create any curvy shape and then design the inside with different sized circles and anything made with curved lines and dots. They could not use straight lines. If students were a square or triangle, they could only use straight lines and their shape to design. They could not use curved lines.
It’s so nice to see everyone again and to meet our new students this year! We are all settled in, now that it’s October. We have been working on design principles for the first month and some murals are popping up around school. Pictures will be coming soon, but meanwhile check out the hand mural by the office created by first and second graders! Upstairs we have some letter pictures by third graders and some geometric designs by fourth and fifth graders.
These murals were created using a black Sharpie marker on white contact paper. Contact paper is great because the students cut out their shape and then stick it on the wall! You can do this at home because the contact paper does not peel away the wall paint when you want to remove it or change positions. (Best to test a little piece first though.) This idea stemmed from the latest fun fad in interior design- wall decals!
I also have a student intern this trimester from USM. Her name is Rachael Nimon and she has been having a lot of fun with our Reiche students!
Go visit a selection of the amazing Tradition storybooks that students made this year, at the USM Wishcamper Center.
To get there- Travelling on Forest Ave. headed away from town, take a left on Bedford Street (you will see the tall Glickman Family Library of USM on your left). Take your first left off of Bedford Street and park at the garage, or at the meters by the new Wishcamper Center.
To get to the display- enter through the Oscher Lifelong Learning Institute door and take a left- the display is down the hall in beautiful glass cases.
So take your family and friends and enjoy! The display will be up until August 31.
All books will be returned at the beginning of the school year in September.
Thank you for loaning them for the summer!
As I was hanging some lotus books for the art opening today, a first grade class walked by and a girl said, “Wow! How do you make those?” And I said, “Oh, folding paper.” And she replied, “And magic.”
Yes, there is a bit of magic that goes into it all. I loved that!
