March Arts

Early Childhood students have been working together on collaborative pieces. 

Music class in Lower Elementary has continued on the path of learning to read music! Note recognition activities, including playing, writing and singing, have taken the music classes to a new level of music theory. Music appreciation lessons of early Irish folk music brought the sights and sounds of important early song, dance and instruments. Lessons and examples of instruments like the bagpipe really had interest high.

LE student made rain sticks in art class and we incorporated them into several music activities. Students also had an opportunity to share their inspiration for the decorations. Using an instrument that they made in a creative group setting offered many lessons and lots of fun!

Middle Elementary students created these sea and landscape collages inspired by Eric Carle. They used a combination of texture rubbings, stamped pages and watercolor pages cut and arranged to show foreground, middle ground, and background.

Upper Elementary artists have been working all school year on realistic portraits inspired by the grid method of Chuck Close.

                       

In preparation for a unit on the Renaissance, Upper Elementary students had an exciting month of music, dance, and instruments from that period. The Renaissance offers many influential composers to choose from, but each student gave a report on a composer whose music was listened to in the classroom. The report was given in first person and the colorful lives of these individuals made for quality entertainment. Dancing was another example of the changes from that time, so outside we went to learn, step by step, two distinct types of dances from that period. Even if the dance steps are forgotten, the memory of the event will last a long time. The innovative and unique instruments are  great physical examples of the creativity and ingenuity of that period.  We had a great hands on lesson when the students actually built instruments! Thanks to the support in their art classes, the students were able to use everything from paper mache and string to pvc pipe and duct tape to build a variety of instruments.

Middle School performed a moving production of "The Giver," directed by Christy Berryessa for their families and our Middle and Upper Elementary students. 

Aftercare artists learned about botanist and artist, Anna Atkins, who created cameraless, cyanotype photogenic drawings of botanical specimens.  The students created art inspired by her work using pieces of nature found on campus.  

Aftercare artist continued experimenting with drawing the illusion of 3-dimenstional objects.