The Surrealist Art of Rene Magritte

Today, we started to look at the art of Rene Magritte to inspire our upcoming art project. Each painting gave us A LOT to talk about. In fact, we totally ran out of time and only got about a third of the way through the art. We'll finish the slideshow in class, but if you want to take a look at home, and leave comments, please do.

After watching the slideshow, students were heading to meet their Reading Buddies, but Clara grabbed paper first saying, "I have a poem." Thanks for the inspiration, you wacky genius, Magritte!

Art teaching

This is Bonnie, who is teaching us about art! She used to teach at Churchill!
She told us about the "Maman Spider" sculpture, and this painting which I didn't catch the name of, but its about a boy named Dominic, who lives in Quebec.

--Camden ;D

Genius Hour #1

We are doing this cool new thing called Genius Hour. Genius Hour is where we do something with a purpose. It is kind of instead of Friday Free Time, which was where we basically do whatever we want. This time, we are doing Genius Hour!

Here are some examples of the things we do in Friday Free Time:

-play random games

-play with blocks

-SOMETIMES work on something that has a point

-goof around

Here are some of the things we do in Genius Hour:

-take things apart (example: toaster)

-record a song and put it on the class YouTube or blog

-write a story with Heather C’s grade 1s or 2s

-endangered species small projects
by Lauren and Millie

 Hunter created a strange little monster and then dissected it!

 Laryssa created some beautiful Plasticene crafts for her grandmother and their family Easter celebration


Haydon created Plasticene characters and used one of the class iPads to film Stop Motion animations.


 

Genius Hour Expectations:

Purpose:

-to be doing something that is useful but that you are not already doing for school - Fiona

-something productive have a goal! - Hunter

-you can work in groups or independently -Fiona

-it might not fit into a category/subject at school - Laryssa

-you may start to bring in supplies for Genius Hour - Pat

-if you’re NOT SURE, just CHECK!

Brainstorm ideas:

-take something apart (toaster) (CHECK WITH PARENTS and SHAUNA FIRST!) - Hunter

-make something - Gabby

-art project, make a painting - Kaleigh

-be an imagineer, make a model of a ride, submit it to Disney - Pat

-practice programming on Hopscotch - Shauna

-make a Puppet Pals video with a student from Heather C’s class about Skippyjon Jones - Shauna

-record yourself singing a song and post it on our Youtube channel - Shauna

-make a Show Me about Math - Jack

-create a Sifteo game - Fin

-draw on Paint with the new drawing pad - Fin

-install the new webcam - Shauna

-research an apple, make a Smart Ideas about it, make a whole project about it - Thomas

-make a Plasticene earth and split it in half - Molly

-make a video game - Hunter

-make a board game - Shauna

-make a Math game - Miggy

-do a project on “boys” and “girls” toys - Fiona

-draw something and label it with the drawing pad (an organ, for example) - Fin

-make something with Plasticene - Sophia

-make a news report - Madi

Liam and Daniel recorded themselves singing.

Hospital Brightening Murals

 When I told the students in Room 209 that my Gran-in-Law (Matt's Gran) was in hospital, they all pitched in and created BEAUTIFUL murals to brighten up her room. She was thrilled by the art that you worked together to create. Everyone who visited the room, family, doctors and nurses alike, LOVED your work!

Surreal Paint Tube Project

Surreal Paint Tube Project

Steps:

-sketch on paper with pencil

-drawing approved

-sketch on canvas

-paint on canvas

Criteria:

-paint tube that is not quite full

-paint tube labelled

-paint tube is squirting out something it would never really squirt out in real life

-line - showing edges of what is coming out of paint tube

-shape and form, value helps make your paint tube look 3D and indicates how full it is

-colour and value- use of tints and shades, good choices of colour scheme (analogous, contrasting, etc...)

-mixing colours!!!!

-space - create the illusion of space in what has been squeezed out of your paint tube

-balance - the artist has taken care to balance out his/her canvas

Thinking About Princesses and Superheroes

In Room 209, we talk a lot about society's expectations for little boys and little girls. I spotted these two recent items about princesses and thought some of you Digital Degus might find them interesting.

Below is a video made by first graders illustrating a song called "The Princess Who Saved Herself". Why is this song (and the story) kind of unusual and special?

Merida, the protagonist from "Brave" was a bit of a change from the usual Disney princesses. I know that students in Room 209 really liked her. Lauren even dressed as her for one Hallowe'en! Last weekend, Disney announced that Merida was their "official 11th princess" and gave her a makeover. Check out the link to see what you think of her makeover!

There is, in my opinion, an AWESOME artist, using photos of young girls dressed as superheroes and creating comic book-style portraits of them! Check out her project. I wonder if we could do something like this with some of the younger students? Maybe a Hallowe'en project. I'm also thinking of the little boys who dressed as princesses for the Medieval Fair. I wonder if someone could create some art based on them?

Art Video

Let There Be ART! We watched this in class today.

Mini Michelangelos - Lesson with Kit

Kit taught us about Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo's art. He told us about how the painter had to lie on scaffolding to paint the ceiling. We got to try out this strategy by colouring in different sections of a portion of the Sistine Chapel.

In the middle of our Art time, we had a great discussion about staying focused, showing our best effort and the message that we send through our behaviour and our art.

Kids' Most Prized Possessions

In class, we checked out this awesome set of photos of children from around the world posing with their most prized possessions. It inspired us to think back to our own childhoods, back to the time when we were all six years old and remember our most prized possessions. In class, the Digital Degus are making self portraits of themselves at ages six with their prized possessions displayed in the foreground. They're also drawing backgrounds of a place they liked to play when they were six. So far, the drawings are off to a great start.

Rainbow Pencils

Martin Luther King Jr. Necklaces!

We celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day today in a unique way in Room 209. We started with a reading of "Martin's Big Words", a pointed reading of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech (which gave most of us "goosies"!), listened to the actual audio of the speech and then gathered all our knowledge into the amazing necklaces you'll see below.

Each student created at least three pendants on his or her necklace, one representing the life of MLK Jr., one representing his words and one representing his impact on the world or on US!

Creating a Mini Art Gallery

In class, we are creating Mini Art Galleries with six famous works of art. Each student will be a the curator of an art exhibit! So far, each student has selected a Picasso painting and a Japanese wood print. We are carefully observing our artworks and preparing commentary and critiques to eventually "tour" people through our galleries.

In class, we have talked about how to prepare our commentaries.

Here are the criteria we have come up with:

Principles and Elements of Design – how do these impact the way you feel about the piece of art?

-texture

-pattern

-colour – complementary colours, hot and cold, analogous, monochromatic

-shape

-space

-lines

-form

-focus

-balance

-rhythm – repeating sort of pattern

-contrast

-harmony

-unity

Questions you might ask when looking at art

-what is the story?

-what does the title mean?

-what is the style of art? (abstract, realistic…)

-who is the portrait of? What is his or her story?

-is it a portrait? A landscape? A still life?

-who made it? What is his or her story? When did he or she paint it?

-What else was going on in the world when the artist created this work?

-what materials were used?

-is it collage? Painting? Sculpture?
-what feelings are evoked in the viewer?

-what I see…

-what I feel…

-what I hear…

-what I wonder….

-how does this compare to other art I’ve seen?

Together, we looked at "Guernica" by Picasso and wrote a critique for it.

Guernica – Pablo Picasso

Line – the way the artist painted the lines of the necks of people makes the painting feel very dramatic

Rhythm – almost as if it’s a play, lots of action happening, lots of passion, textures with shades of black and white

Texture – on horse, looks like it’s a collage out of newspaper, Picasso might have done that because the newspaper tells a story and the horse tells a story, trying to put pressure on the Germans to make peace?

Colours – dark and solemn instead of bouncy and light and happy, Picasso chose those colours because it’s a war and that’s a dark time to be in

Space – really really tight, everybody all together, other places destroyed, this place is the safest place left, it makes it feel very urgent, all the action of the war is going on at once

What else is going on in the world at the time Picasso painted this? Lots of war and destruction, bombs, he painted this during the Spanish Civil War, 1500-1600 civilians were killed in a Spanish town by German bombers. This makes us wonder what war adds to people’s lives

What I feel – everything feels sad, everything is dying, I feel screaming, death, sadness, pain, I feel like I’m a part of it because so much is going on, you get wrapped into it

What does the title mean? “Guernica” sounds like a made-up title of random syllables and later we read that it means the town that the bombing happened in

 

Pablo Picasso

In class, we read spoke and read about one of the most well known artists of all-time, Pablo Picasso. We were surprised to learn many things about him and enjoyed learning more about the man behind the famous art.

As Shauna read aloud from "Lives of the Artists: Messes, Masterpieces and What the Neighbours Thought", students listened and then took turns summarizing paragraphs. You can read below to see what we learned!

Pablo Picasso

1881-1973

-age 92

We already know:

-abstract artist – not realistic

-blue period

-there are some original Picasso paintings in Ottawa

-knew how to do abstract and portraits, not many artists know how to do that

-from Europe – Spain

-he did a lot of different types of art: ceramics, sketches, paintings, sculpture

We learned together:

-he didn’t do well in school, he had dyslexia

-he brought a pigeon to school and drew it

-he was pretty successful in Spain at a young age

-he lived in an attic in Paris, was robbed for everything but paintings

-whenever he had enough money, he went to the bullfights, because he liked that as a child

-he was extremely productive, a workaholic

-he was pretty small, but buff

-he’s crazy, he went crazy around people, he was a show off

-he had lots of important friends, but he was very violent and they were afraid of him!

-he dated a lot of ladies and a neighbor threw a rock at a window

-he only let one person watch him paint, his second and last wife

-he had four children and had a good relationship when they were younger, when they were older, he didn’t have interest in them

-he had some weird habits: he didn’t throw anything out, he didn’t let anyone dust his studio and he safety pinned his wallet to his vest pocket

-he was paranoid about his security

-he didn’t have a phone until his son had a medical emergency

-he had a strict and sort of strange diet

-eccentric:  different from other people, liked to keep lots of animals

-really big show-off, vain: liked books and movies about himself

-prolific: he made 200 paintings at the age of 90
-source: "Lives of the Artists" - Krull

We learned on our own:
-Picasso's dad painted in the realistic style, he saw his son's paintings and quit painting because Pablo was better! - Pat

Remembrance Day Sharing

I was so proud of the students from Room 209. We had some wonderful discussions about Remembrance Day and they created a beautiful, unconventional wreath with the theme of "Why Peace is Always a Good Idea". 

During the Remembrance Day sharing, most of the Room 209 students were in either the Ukulele Club or School of Rock who shared very emotional pieces of music. The students who sat with me did a beautiful job also, retaining the solemn tone of the sharing and helping to keep younger students focused on the presentations as well.

I hope everyone is having a thoughtful and meaningful Remembrance weekend.

Mood Monsters Teaching Us How to Comment

The artists of Room 209 created Mood Monsters, tiny colourful monsters expressing different moods. Each student created one little monster and a voice bubble. In the voice bubble, the monster introduced him or herself and explains his or her mood and the reasons for that mood.

Also, in the middle of this colourful bulletin board, Erika made two huge voice bubbles reminding us of the appropriate ways to comments on our peers' presentations. When someone in the class wants to comment on another classmate's work, he or she will say, "I liked it when..." and then give some advice by starting with the phrase, "Next time...". The presenter will then reply politely with, "Thank you."

Pop Ap

During Ap's visit to our classroom, Sophia created a beautiful Pop Art piece depicting her. So fun and funky!

Ap also wrote us a thank you note after her visit, thanking the students of Room 209 for the pats and cuddles!

Pop! Canada

The artists in Room 209 are remarkably innovative. We realized that we don't have a Canadian flag in our room to face when we sing O'Canada each morning. A wonderful group of collage artists created this Pop Art inspired collage for us to look at and reflect on our awesome country when we sing!