So much

So much to catch up on! OH MY.

Firstly, we had our end of year art show last week.  Admin has reigned in the art department this year and we were told we were to have something much more sedate and organised than the fabulously wild and crazy show of last year as parents complained last year that they couldn't find their own child's work and that it was too crowded.

So sedate we did.  It was still A LOT of work; mounting, labelling, hanging, rehanging thanks to the lovely moist climate here that makes everything fall down.  It looks fabulous, but it is spread out all over the school and our "opening" wasn't supported by admin, nor was it very well attended by parents. SIGH.

[Last week was a hard week for me too as Matt was in London all week, I was leaving home at 6:30am and getting home at 8:30 pm (EXHAUSTED), Remi had 7 (of his 15) final exams in 3 days (!!) and we are still waiting for our new helper to arrive (TONIGHT!!!).  Needless to say there was some fast food for dinner, and the house kinda started to fall apart.  I have one more hard week of school left and then the last 2 weeks should be nice and easy.]

Anyway, some photos from the show:

GRADE 1: Van Gogh flower vase inspired pinch pots (they had drawn wonderful Van Gogh inspired flower vases and they had to interpret their drawing in 3D in a unit about famous artists)

 Kindergarten 1: Exploration of lines within their unit about natural phenomenon.  We looked at curly swirly lines to make water (oil pastels with liquid water colours over the top) and curvy lines to make rainbows with chalk pastels .

These took me FOREVER to hang because only around 80 out of nearly 380 pictures had names on them!!!

I ended up having to make some of them up.....

 Lindsey's fabulous prints she did with her classes with a visiting artist. (2nd grade).  Students looked at Munch's "the scream" and had to draw their own version of a scream and turn it into a print.

 Lindsey's work again, this time with 3rd grade.  They researched masks from around the world and drew them BIG with oil pastels.  They then turned these into FANTASIC clay masks with slabs of clay draped over newspaper bases to give shape and with added facial details in clay.  They looked fab, but we just didn't have anywhere to hang them or display them (a familiar problem at school).

 She also had a visiting artist come in and make "jar heads": air dry clay faces around class jars.

 Grade 1: Picasso inspired faces.

 Kindergarten 2: Aboriginal Art inspired pieces.  We spend WEEKS on this unit.  Teaching about what animals lived in Australia, showing Aboriginal dot painting, teaching about how symbols can be used to tell stories etc.  This was their final piece.  For this one, we created cardboard animal pieces for them to trace around (or they could trace their hands).

 Grade 4: warm and cool colour faces.  (I held onto these from much earlier in the year.)

 Grade 1: Picasso inspired faces

 Grade 2: jar heads

 Grade 3: masks

 KG2: Aboriginal art

 

 Grade 2: The Scream print making

And some of the FANTASTIC middle school work:

Grade 8: Clay animals

 Grade 7: an interesting unit about Eastern religion and philosophy which tied into what they were doing in Social Studies (also worked with a visiting artist)

 Grade 8: Self portrait drawing using a grid.  Sarah got the kids to take a selfie with an unusual/interesting expression to use for this, and it worked really well.  I can totally tell who most of the kids are.

They then had to turn their self portrait into a carved print.

 I love these.

Good work going on in our department.  We need to work on a better art show format though, as it was just a bit flat.  Nowhere near the energy of last year.