4th graders detail their yoga-inspired sculptures after a long discussion about how we use our bodies to communicate meaning.

Students in Mrs. Mathur's class got to detail their clay sculptures today using clay tools. Before we placed our clay bodies into a position, we had a discussion about how the way we hold our bodies communicates meaning. Next week, they will use permanent acrylic to paint their sculptures. During our discussion I showed them a slideshow of various sculptures of people that strongly show some sort of emotion. Children were amazing in their insight in to what emotions these sculptures were trying to communicate.

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4th grader details their Anasazi-inspired vessel using sketchbook ideas

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URGENT REQUEST: Need Oatmeal cannisters (updated November 16th)

We STILL need many, many more oatmeal containers. Both large and smaller size cannisters will do. Even cardboard TANG canisters will serve the purpose.

The 4th Grade classes will be making totem poles and studying paper sculpting. Can you please save and drop off any and all oatmeal containers you may have at home to the art room. Thanks in advance. You can contact me at Miriam.Cutelis@yahoo.com if you have any questions.

Creating Varied Cones In Preparation for Totem Poles

As a skill building activity in preparation to making our paper sculpture totem poles, children used regular copy paper to create varied cones. They were given the basics of creating a cone and then asked to tweak the formula in various ways and explore how their cones were then different.

These cone making skills will be helpful when making their totem poles. A cone could be used to make their animal eyes, ears, nozzle or beaks. Next week, children will explore various ways to manipulate paper to create fur, feathers or scales. All these skills will help children in the end create a highly skilled animal totem sculpture.

Primary colors, secondary colors and complementary (4th Grade)

In preparation to painting their portraits children created color wheels, learned about primary and secondary colors as well as the magic effect of complementary colors.

Young artists were only given blue, red and yellow oil pastels to create color wheels. To make secondary colors they had to blend the oil pastels with their fingers. Some children enjoyed this practice so much that they chose to create tertiary colors (mixing a primary and a secondary). It's truly fascinating to see 3 colors have the ability to create so many new colors.

Oil pastels are very creamy....we used our fingers to rub the colors together.

4th Grade Get Facial Proportions Introduction

Children got a lesson on basic facial proportions. The images you see below are their initial attempts at applying the guidelines. Not all works are shown and these are samples from two fourth grade classes.