Imagine

This summer has been an incredible journey into the world of art. It started with a family trip to the Harn museum that inspired explorations into color,lines and shapes, which led to the discovery of different mediums and techniques.We read books about famous artists like, Vincent Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe and Jackson Pollack. Somewhere around mid summer we provoked the idea of finding a way to show our art to our families .We talked about our trip to the museum and the children were excited to make an "art show" for their parents and friends. Our art show was a huge success.  We documented the work that the children did with the intention of making our summer visible to our parents. This type of documentation lets those not in our classroom day to day understand our path; where we started and why and how we ended up where we did. Our art show was not only an opportunity to show off our beautiful  works of creativity, it was also a way to sho...

The children enjoyed making  sculptures so much we thought they might be interested in making mobiles.  The frame for the first mobile was teacher made out of a wooden hoop and beach reed. We explained that it was a "fragile" frame and that we needed to find things to hang on it that were light. We asked "What are some things that are light?", and the first answer we got was "paper". The next idea was "art made on paper". An idea was born! The children drew pictures of their choice using colored pencils. We made them smaller in our "magic shrinking machine" aka,our awesome new color printer. We laminated them so they would last.  The children also strung small beads,feathers and bells on twine. For the second mobile we set out a wooden hoop, branches, tape, twine and wire. We asked the children to create together a frame for our next mobile. With very little teacher guidance the task was skillfully accomplished.  B...

Another medium we explored as a class this summer is printing. Printing can be done in numerous ways and after we did these printing projects we realized that we incorporate printing into many art works that we do. For this exploration two provocations were set up. Our first printing investigation was to find a way to make a copy of our original painting. We set out black paint,various sized brushes,and a blank wooden board. The children painted an image on the board and then we asked how they could make a copy. What would happen if we put a blank piece of paper on top of their wet painting? The class loved peeling their paintings off the board and seeing the their first prints. Our second printing explored the ability to print the same image multiple times. Using styrofoam and pencils the class carved out images that they would like to print. They painted their images and printed them over and over!

On our visit to the museum we saw some amazing sculptures. It sparked a conversation about how sculptures are different from paintings. Paintings are,"flat" (2-dimensional) and sculptures are 3-dimensional like, "statues". We set out clay, wire and beads and let the children make their very own sculptures. We used clay as the base,"so it doesn't fall down". They learned quickly that too many beads made it fall over, "because it's too heavy". Look for them displayed in our upcoming art show.

This has been a great summer filled with friends, art and sunny water days. The children loved making boats out of toothpicks and wine corks. They really worked hard figuring out how to make their boats float. They also made a cool water wall using funnels,PVC pipe and 2 liter soda bottles. We were excited to see the children come up with this idea on their own and we supplied them with more materials for our next water day. They really figured out how to make it work.  It was neat to watch how they worked together.

We introduced the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.  We looked at some of her paintings of flowers,bones and desert skies. We noticed that many of her flower paintings were painted from an "up close" perspective. We set out fresh flowers from our garden and magnifying glasses so we might gain some Georgia O'Keeffe inspiration. We set up a provocation with pictures of her flower paintings and a variety of mediums;watercolors in squeeze bottles,tempera paint,glue and a mixture of colored sand and glue. The children's paintings were colorful and bright just like the ones we saw by Georgia O'Keeffe.

We read a book about another famous artist named Jackson Pollock. His art is much different than anything we have seen so far this summer. His art doesn't look like a person,a city or any "thing" at all. His style of drip painting was unique. The children enjoyed trying it out.  We found it to be messy but fun. We imagined what it would be like to paint a huge canvas with this technique.