Grade 3/4 ~ Finishing up our hot air balloons!

We've nearly finished our balloons and the ones that are hanging up in the Art Room look so bright and colourful!  A few students are adding finishing touches and making some little peg doll people to pop inside their baskets. Well done guys! They've takes us a few weeks, but the end product was definitely worth it.

Grade 5/6 ~ Christmas crafts.

Our scrapbook pages are just about complete and they look fantastic. Well done guys - you have documented some great memories from this year at Marlborough and I hope you continue to document your story through scrapbooking or art journalling. In years to come, you will really enjoy looking back on these.

It seems a bit early, but with only a few weeks left of term, the Grade 5/6s have started on their Christmas crafts. We've started to make some glittery yarn ornaments. Students could choose to make a bauble or a tree.

For the baubles, students blew up a balloon and selected some yarn/string. Then they dipped the string into the papier-mache paste we made up and wrapped it around the balloon. They're now hanging up to dry and we can hopefully pop the balloon and add some glitter and bling to the yarn ornaments next week.

For the trees, we used cardboard cones and wrapped them in plastic wrap (so the dried yarn won't stick). Then we dipped our yarn into the papier-mache paste and began wrapping around the cone. Once dry, we hope to remove the cardboard and plastic wrap and have a free standing yarn tree. Stay tuned for some photos of our finished ornaments...

Foundation ~ Modelling owls.

It's nearly time for our excursion to the zoo! I'm looking forward to seeing all the animals and taking lots of photos. I wonder if we will see any owls? I have had lots of little owls staring at me in the Art Room the past few weeks... How did so many owls get in the Art Room I hear you ask??? 

It was those clever Prep students! Look what they have made! Here are Prep A's creations.

And here are Prep B's little owls. Aren't they gorgeous?!

We used salt dough to make them and the students were so good at listening to my instructions and following my demonstrations on how to form the dough and model it into an owl. I took them home and baked them in the oven for a few hours to harden (and they smelled delicious but I had to instruct my own children that they were NOT for eating!!)

The following week, we painted our owls and prepared a background for them. Stay tuned for the final reveal of our owls, but in the meantime here is a photo of one cute little owl all painted.  Oh and of course, we just had to read 'Owl Babies' together while we made these!

Grade 1/2 ~ Investigating George Rodrigue and 'Blue Dog'.

Grade 1/2 have been investigating the artist George Rodrigue, who was born and raised in Louisiana, USA. He began painting when he was in the third grade while he was bedridden with polio. He is famous for many paintings, but the most beloved would have to be his series of Blue Dog paintings.

We admired many of George Rodrigue's Blue Dog paintings and talked about the bright, bold colours he painted with. We were intrigued by the way Blue Dog was standing in each of the paintings and how his eyes were bright yellow and staring straight ahead. Some of the paintings had Blue Dog dressed in funny hats or ties and some had him in front of some very weird backgrounds! We discussed 'Space' as an element of art and how Blue Dog was in the foreground of most of the paintings - he was bold and large, while the backgrounds were painted smaller to look further away.

To create our own Blue Dog inspired paintings, we began by working together in a guided drawing session to practice drawing our own dog. Then we had a go at drawing a background.  When students felt ready, they began their artworks by drawing their dog in black oil pastel and then painting with poster paints.

The colours in these finished paintings just look amazing! Well done Grade 1/2! I wonder if any of you can still pronounce George Rodrigue's name? I might ask you again in a few weeks time!

Here are the paintings created by Shannon, Thomas, Sam and Evelyn. Fantastic work!

Grade 3/4 ~ Making progress on our hot air balloons!

We've been waiting for layers of papier-mache to dry and hoping our balloons had not popped or shrunk between lessons!  After a couple of mishaps (that we managed to overcome in creative ways), most of us had a final layer of white paper on our balloons and they were dry and ready for us to paint this week.

Aren't they looking bright and colourful? I just love the patterns, designs and colour combinations you are all coming up with.

Some students have already started constructing their baskets and strings, as well as thinking about the materials we could use to make a flame just under the balloon (we're thinking tissue paper or cellophane). Well done Grade 3/4 - you are all doing such a great job. We're nearly there!

Grade 1/2 ~ Mister Seahorse

I just love this book by Eric Carle! We really enjoyed sharing it together as a class and admiring all the beautiful artwork inside. We also enjoyed learning about the different types of fish and sea creatures whose Dads look after their babies.

The bold, bright colours really caught our attention page after page, as did the subdued watercolour lines in the background.  We set to work to create painted papers for our own seahorses and we used a variety of tools to give them a textured look (toothpicks, texture wands, bubble wrap, paint scrapers etc).

While they were drying, we painted our wavy lines and splatters for our backgrounds.  We used liquid watercolours for this part of our artwork.

Next lesson, our painted papers were all dry so we began tracing and cutting out our seahorses. Students could choose to make 1, 2 or 3 seahorses for their page. Whatever painted paper we didn't use, we kept in a special tub because it can be used by others for different projects (and looks too pretty to throw away!)

Decorating our seahorses was a lot of fun! We could choose from glitter glue, sparkles, little gemstones and sparkly stars (or all of the above as some students chose!)

Time to glue them onto our backgrounds and admire our creativity. Well done Grade 1/2!  Here are Thomas and Ethan's gorgeous seahorses.

Foundation ~ The Very Hungry Caterpillar balloon paintings.

Foundation students have had lots of fun the past fortnight immersing themselves in 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle. Again, we spent some class time discussing the way Eric Carle creates his artwork and the techniques he uses. We talked a lot about 'texture' and 'colour' and making collages out of painted papers.

For our artwork, we painted the caterpillar's body and head with balloons.  We made sure the balloons weren't too big and... no... none of them popped!!

Then we cut out fruit shapes with some left over textured painted paper. We had a lot of fun using the hole punch to cut out little holes in our fruit, so it looked just like the book!

Adding some crayon details and highlights finished off our artwork. I think they all look so colourful! I especially love all those little pieces of fruit.  Here are Daniel and Nash's fabulous caterpillars up close.

Well done Foundation students - you all worked really hard on these!