This year has gone by so quickly and here we are the last week of May! The art room has been a whirlwind of activity with the art show and a visiting artist. A big shout out here to Annie Wilson who took time out of her busy senior schedule at BLS to create a mural with grade 6. We wish Annie great success as she heads off to college. The children seemed to enjoy all the great art in the yearly art exhibit and by now all their work has gone back to their teachers for distribution.
As we finish off the year grades 4, 5 and 6 have been creating stop action animations with the iPads, all of which can be found on our sbcaartroom YouTube channel. Grade 2 is finishing up on their found object robots while grade 3 makes paper talking puppets. Kindergarten and grade 1 have been introduced to the Castle Island sea serpent and have been working on outstanding drawings!
Wishing everyone a relaxing and rejuvenating summer!!

It’s been a literal whirlwind of activity in the art room. We are in the process of constructing and creating this year’s Kinetic Art Show. Students are constructing, painting and drawing artworks that move or creating the allusion of movement.  We’ve been looking at the art of Calder, Ricky, Appel and Agam just to name a few and  I hope you will be thrilled with the results when we turn the school cafeteria into our gallery on May 1.
Over the past two months some students have been creating portraits which is always a treat for me. We now have large, 2 sided table mirrors for the students to use! I introduced grade 1 to Frida Kahlo and they did careful renderings of themselves complete with a special item in the way Frida added her monkey.  In grade 5 students learned about proportion and how to compare and measure when drawing faces. Grade 6 took selfies and used lightboxes to create their Roy Lichtenstein benday dot images. Later, we chopped up their selfies and combined them to create 6th grade mash-ups, making an entire new 6th grade class complete with names and favorite classes! Second grade made their portraits on bags which they stuffed and turned in to People Pillows! Now they can be in 1 places at one time!
In grade 4 students learned about body proportions and how to make a person more lifelike by creating knees, elbows and shoulders that would help the figure move.
Kindergarten learned how to fold Origami cats and dogs as well as painting turtles with patterns and designs. At the same time grade 3 was busy learning about prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux, France and made faux walls on which to paint their wonderful animals.
Thanks for all the support at Artsonia, the children and I love your comments.
 

 
Another month that has just flown. As the saying goes “Time flies when you’re having fun!” January is our architecture month in art so we try to do an architecture project in each class. In K2 we created blue prints using blue paper, white paint and cardboard pieces for printing lines. Each child was ask to design a “cool” building. Grade 1 designed a 3D playground creating surprising paper sculptures.
In grade 2 students learned about castles and did drawings complete with 3D bridges and moats. Third grade used brayers and ink to print multiple images of houses they had drawn. We combined all the house to create a big city. In grade 4 it was a lot of work to roll multiple tubes of paper which were combine into a geodesic dome  (instructions here) and after it was completed the whole class fit inside!
Fifth graders learned how to use T-squares, use a vanishing point and how to make incredible 1 point perspective cities. Grade 6 used the same technique but combined the new skill with collage to create Surrealist artworks.
Please check out all the awesome art at Artsonia!

​December is here and Christmas is just around the corner so the art room has been as busy as elves in the North Pole. In fact, some art projects may not have been uploaded to Artsonia just in case they will be a present for someone special.
We had a great time painting winter cardinals in first grade and we also painted with sponges in kindergarten creating the most beautiful poinsettias.
In grade 2 we drew enormous snowmen and created snow filled backgrounds with watercolor and salt! Grade 3 is diligently working on their snow globe pictures and is looking forward to adding the sparkly snow. Weaving is a favorite activity for grade 4 who should be completing the project by Christmas break.
In grade 5 some of the students are still weaving while others have completed their stunning birch trees while grade 6 used soft pastels to create snowmen at night complete with shading..
Please know you can find all of our art on Artsonia.com. If you have not yet given Artsonia permission for your child’s art to be viewed you can email me for instructions. 
Art Club enjoyed a final meeting and created Edible Architecture. More buildings were sacrificed to hungry children than made it home but it was a fun time!
Some grade 5 students had some fun creating a snowman out of cups and staples. Check it out below.

​October is such a busy month! We’ve been drawing, painting, printmaking and constructing! Grade 5 is finishing up on their 3D pictures. They designed a scene by creating a background, middle ground and foreground on 3 separate papers and then combined them into a single frame. In grade 6 students learned how to create a Victorian style home and transformed it into a haunted house. They are getting very skillful at using shading techniques and thinking about contrast.
Grade 4 students are now experts at drawing lifelike trees which they are including in their Fall pictures. Painting goofy pumpkins in k2 helped us work on our color mixing skills (we only used red and yellow) and then we practiced paper cutting with scissors to add the eyes, mouth and teeth. Well done! Second grade used secondary colors (purple, orange and green) to paint fabulous pumpkin fields and then used construction crayons to add detail. They also made leaf print clay bowls by pressing a leaf into the clay, forming the bowl and then finally painting the bowl.
Grade 1 painted scaredy cats with stand up fur and added backgrounds to explain why their cats were scared. Today they created their own stamps and printed patterns for their paper blankets. Grade 3 students know how to create a symmetrical images by only drawing half. The portraits they have made in this manner are wonderfully creepy.
Art club has gotten off to a great start. We've already created drawings and added talking mouths with the ipad minis and used bleach to design and print t-shirts.
In November I look forward to weaving in many of the classes. Feel free to clean out your old yarn supplies and drop them by school.
Please sign up for and visit Artsonia.com. The kids love knowing you are looking at their art.

​​Just a few FYI’s about our Art classes:
All students in grades K2 through grade 6 visit the art room each week. Kindergarten has a 30 minute session, grades 1 through 4 have a 40 minute class and grades 5 and 6 have 80 minutes. Sometimes we complete a project in one class however most art works require more than one day so your child may not always bring an artwork home weekly. It may also be delayed coming home because it is drying, being displayed in school or I haven’t finished photographing it for Artsonia.

In art we will look at ancient art as well as contemporary art and everything in between while weaving, painting, constructing, drawing, animating, etc. I’m hoping by presenting a wide variety of experiences every child will find something that excites them. In addition we will be learning about the elements and principles of art and how an artist uses them to express ideas and feelings. 

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions. 
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We’ve been so busy In the Art Room that I totally forgot about February! We created Asian inspired art schoolwide from Gyotaku (fish prints), Chinese landscapes using charcoal, ink painting of lions and monkeys using sumi brushes from Japan along with painted panda bears.
More recently we have begun our Annual Art Show creations. The theme this year is birds and feathers so we have creating sculptures and 2D art. The Art Show is May 2 this year, I hope you can attend and show your support for all the effort the students have been putting into their work.
As we complete the art show projects we are learning about animation in grade 5 using artist manikins. The completed movies will be linked to this page when complete.
Grade 3 has been using light tables to transfer their drawings while grade 5 animates with iPad minis. 
Remember to visit Artsonia.com to see all of our student artworks.

After an extended Christmas vacation due to snow, we are all back at work in the art room. January is the perfect time of year to relax in our warm classroom and look at the architecture of the world. In grade 4 one class has been hard at work creating Russian architecture inspired buildings modeled after Saint Basil's Cathedral ,while the other class is using India's iconic Taj Mahal (one of the new 7 wonders of the world) to inspire their drawings with minarets and onion skin domes.  Grade 2 is starting with castles, learning the parts and drawing their own, even using some 3D drawing tricks to create the illusion of space. In K2 students will be design building “blue prints” in a printmaking project. Grade 3 has been learning about the design of bridges by creating a landscape that needs a bridge, designing the structure and adding it to the page using collage.
In 5th and 6th grade we have been concentrating on self-portraits. Grade 6 is using clay to build and a self-portrait bobble head. Grade 5 learned about facial proportions and completed a self-portrait on paper while using a mirror to examine and draw themselves.
I look forward to sharing the wonderful art on Artsonia.com as soon as it is completed and photographed.
We have some very interesting Art Show projects that the students will be working on throughout the next few months. Two of the projects requires items we don’t usually have in the art room so if you can help us out with a donation we would be thrilled.

• 3 yards of  lightweight white cotton (for batik) or a couple of old white flat sheets
• Lots of old Globe newspapers or other globe-sized newspapers (The Boston Herald is too small)  for grade 4's geodesic dome building project

Congratulations to the following students from South Boston Catholic Academy who had their artwork published in the Boston Herald's "Through the Eyes of a Child" Christmas Eve special section.  We are very proud of their achievement - Betsy Medeiros grade 1, Marion Smith grade 2, and Anderson Wu and Sean Findlen both grade 3 students. 

​We’ve been so busy in the art room the past 5 weeks! First, a great thank you for the generous yarn donations! We received some real alpaca yarn and some of the children got a chance to watch a video of alpaca shearing and then see how the fleece is turned into yarn.
 The students love, love, love weaving! 5th and 6th graders constructed their own straw looms (also called belt looms) and created colorful weavings, many of which were transformed into head bands. In grade 4 students have been diligently weaving for weeks but don’t want to stop until the cardboard looms are complete. (If you are reading this please don’t spoil the secret and let on about the weaving because you may be getting a weaving as a Christmas present.)
We are not trying to rush the season and we waited until after Thanksgiving to begin some Christmas and winter themed projects. Cardinals in the snow in grade 1 are a favorite of everyone. It’s fun to see the individuality in each child’s painting. Kindergarten is creating some snowy city collages and then adding snow with paint.  Grade 3 was introduced to the art of Norman Rockwell, even watching a video and seeing him at work before creating their own wonderful drawings. We have these fabulous new woodless colored pencils that they love and they used them to show how they gather and celebrate the season.
In grade 1 and 2 we are making snowmen. This year we are experimenting with the magical effects of salt in paint to create snowy backgrounds as well as playing with different views of the snowmen.
All the work is being uploaded to Artsonia as soon as possible and the art will be sent home through the child’s classroom teacher.
Have a great December!!!