Covered in Snow!

Hello Blog Friends,
     This week I was surprised to awaken to my alarm rather than the district "all call".  I thought for sure that we would have a two hour delay and I was very surprised by our early dismissal on Tuesday.  Then my drive in to school on Wednesday morning was during a heavily falling snow! The weather really played havoc with this week!  This was a very LOUD week in the art room.  I'm sure the snow was an influence and I think NWEA testing also left the children feeling a sense of relief after their testing sessions were completed.  They get really squirrely during their specials time. Let's add that to an approaching three day weekend!!!!  Oh my goodness!  I am really looking forward to this three day weekend.  My daughter and grandson are coming to visit and I will be celebrating my birthday with them and my son and daughter-in-law.  It should be a wonderful weekend.
     Here's what is happening in the art room next week!

Kindergarten-The kindergarten children will be completing their Piet Mondrian lesson by adding fat, black, lines to their primary colored squares and rectangles.  Their artwork will look so much like a painting by Piet Mondrian!  Their next lesson will be about collage.  I will read them a short book about snowmen and they will cut out three, white, circles to create a snow person.  They will add embellishments to create a snow person collage next week.

First Grade-Is still working on creating a stick puppet.  One class is two lessons ahead of the others.  This happens because of snow days, convocations, or absences.  When my grade levels are on more than one lesson it can become very confusing so I work very hard to keep my classes on the same lesson.  When I have a class that is ahead, I have what I call "Bandaid lessons".  These lessons are related to what I am teaching at the time and align with state standards.  This week some of the first grade classes watched The Snowman by: Raymond Briggs.  This is an Oscar award winning, short, animation film.  It tells the story of a boy who builds a snowman who then comes to life.  The movie tells the story using only pictures.  It is a feast for the eyes!  The other first grade classes will be viewing this movie after they catch up on their puppet lesson.  That means they will have applied the paper mache' to their puppet's head and prepared it for painting.

Third Grade-Third grade is beginning a weaving lesson.  The children will be making a draw-string pouch that is big enough to hold a DSL-XL.  This week they learned about Diane Itter who was a wonderful weaver from Indiana University.  They learned that weaving is a skill that has been practiced since Biblical times.  We really don't know who the first weaver was but we do know that weaving is practiced by many cultures all over the world.  The children made their looms this week!

Fourth Grade-The fourth grade is learning about the art of the written word, calligraphy!  This lesson is being taught to support the efforts of our visiting artist, Mrs. Sofiya Inger.  Because our fourth graders are the first group of children who have attended Maple Glen from kindergarten through fourth grade, they are being given the task of adding the Guiding Principles to the art installation.  This means their hand writing needs to be beautiful.........or at least legible!  They have seen several examples of beautiful, American, calligraphy including John Hancock's "John Hancock"!  We talked about the history of written communication and how much the importance of handwriting has changed from the days when beautiful handwriting was a skill that was cherished till today when some schools are no longer teaching cursive writing!  The final assignment will be to copy the Guiding Principles using beautiful handwriting.