The Arts at Abintra - November News

As Early Childhood artists talked about autumn and leaves, they also learned about nature artist Andy Goldsworthy. They explored Abintra's campus and picked up fallen leaves to create their own nature sculptures.

To integrate their classroom study of Africa, Early Childhood artists learned about African patterns. They are creating beads out of patterns they created.

Early Childhood A artists also pin-punched animals and trees from Africa and painted a landscape to put them on.

Early Childhood practiced rhythm and movement using hoops during Musikgarten.

Lower Elementary artists ended their lessons on the elements of design with "texture.” In an effort to reference their classroom study of land and water forms as well as to explore texture, they created encaustic (beeswax) paintings. LE parent Matt Slocum donated blocks of beeswax from his bee farm for the students to melt and mix with pigment. The students were fascinated by the hot wax drying immediately after they brushed it on their board. They enjoyed scraping and cutting into the wax to reveal the layers of color and to created texture.

Lower Elementary students are learning the time value and names of notes and rests on a music staff and applying that knowledge to sight reading musical notation. Note and symbol recognition has moved along very quickly! They sing songs that support classroom topics including the names of all the states in alphabetical order and stories read in the classroom.There is also singing of tongue twisters and a few classics. A variety of instruments are brought in, such as a flute, and passed around and discussed. Then there is a demonstration as well as listening to examples of that instrument. Exploring music through movement and with percussion instruments is always a hit and really gets the motor skills working. There is so much discovery and learning going on already, it is a very exciting time in the LE music class!

Did you know that your eyes are in the middle of your head and that the width of your eye is the same width of the space between your eyes? Lower Elementary students enjoyed learning these facts and more when given a lesson on drawing portraits.

Middle Elementary's pastel self-portraits are part of a series of studies on proportion and observation. Students have diagrammed faces divided into halves and quarters to show the location of the features, and have done self portraits in pencil while observing their own features in a mirror.

Congratulations to Upper Elementary on a wonderful production of "Coyote Tales!" The students worked on everything from props to costumes to stage management these past two weeks. Thank you to their director, Abintra alumni Christy Berryessa, for working so hard with the students!