April & May Arts

Early Childhood Artists have been working with Sarah and Maria Asuncion on weaving using recycled fabrics and other material.

Early Childhood created pinwheels for their last project of the year.

In the afternoons, the older students in the early childhood classes have explored two new pieces of music that tell an entire story without words. The children tell the story with movement and motion. Clearly their focused listening skills are being well developed. They light up when we do these pieces.  We are also learning a new dance to a triple meter piece of music called the Bella Bimba. In addition, we are working on a triple meter ensemble piece called Listen For Bells. These are harder rhythms to hold on to while the melody is being plays on the resonator bars. Progress is steady and sure. They love the challenge.

"The Life Cycle of a Dandelion"

Lower Elementary artists have been working with weaving as well.  They created a multimedia piece by first weaving a basket out of recycled fabric and then creating artwork around it that illustrates Spring. They finished off these pieces by creating a Haiku about Spring.

Lower Elementary artists also weaved baskets out of paper and then drew fruit in the basket from a still life.

Lower Elementary artists are wrapping up the school year in art by reviewing the elements of design. They are creating a multimedia piece inspired by Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  They first paint several pieces of paper in different colors.  Then they scratch in lines and use daubers to create texture.   They cut shapes out of the painted paper and arrange them to fill the space of a white piece of paper and to form their subjects.

In April, the students continued to experience music in new and exciting ways. They worked on songs that are integrated into the class reading of "Little House On The Prairie", and discussed the social relevance of the content and memorizing lyrics and melody. With a blossoming knowledge of note names and note length, they explored writing their own melodies as a group. We would listen back to the melodies they created, via xylophone, and discuss the relationship of notes and meter. The ideas about how to expand and elaborate on this exercise were really flowing! This is a great way to apply the many aspects they worked on and actually hear something they intentionally created.

Students were also able to have most of the songs that they have been learning this year recorded for a compilation CD to take home. Hearing themselves sing, is a special experience, and now, they can share that and enjoy that feeling over and over again. 

Lower Elementary students ended their the year in music with a talent show that they put on for their classmates and guides.

Middle Elementary students have been working on three dimensional structures made entirely of paper strips.  Their first challenge was to find as many different ways as they could to make paper stand up on its own. Their experimentation resulted in amusement parks, mouse runs, domes, pathways, all forms of miniature architecture.

A second paper project was a group puzzle where the goal was to have individual "properties" connecting via rivers, roads or bridges.

In connection with the TPAC performance of "Bleu" students drew different forms of sea life and designed prints representing life in the ocean.  The prints of octopi, seahorses, starfish, etc were then enhanced with watercolor and colored pencils.

 

Upper Elementary students continue a collaboration encaustic (beeswax) painting started 2 years ago by Upper Elementary students.

Middle School students have been working on their senior video that will be a walk through their journey at Abintra.

Middle School students worked with Lower Elementary students on a collaboration project for the 2015/16 Wine and Cheese event.

 

Aftercare art students created multimedia flower paintings using recycled materials such as fabric and bottle caps.

Lower Elementary student, Gaia Wood, taught aftercare art students how to create several things through origami such as flowers, hats, and boxes.  

Aftercare artists also experimented with mixing paint and bubbles. They blew bubbles onto their paper and when the bubbles popped it created a beautiful design.  

Aftercare art students enjoyed created their last artwork of the year by writing their name on half a piece of paper with charcoal and then folding it over to create a mirror of their name. They then traced over their name with sharpie and created a creature from the shape their name created.