1st Graders Begins Constructing Houses for Mice

In connection with 1st grade author study of Kevin Henkes' work, children in the art room will be making houses for mice. Each child will use recycled materials to create a house fit for a mouse.

In preparation, we looked at various images of other small houses as reference.
This one has 3 floors.
This one has a wrapping paper wallpaper and ribbon on the sides.
This one has 4 rooms.
This one has a curtain and decorated painted walls.
Here is an example of how children could use recycled materials to create a chair.

Below are images of children painting their homes. Due to the lack of shoe boxes for each child, children are working in pairs to construct a space fit for a pretend talking mouse.
Children has to make decisions about inside and outside colors.

Drawing Animals Using Shapes Displays- Kindergarten

Kindergartners have been learning about how shapes come together to make depictions of animals. They have also been using their skills learned last week on lines to add details to their drawings such as feathers, fur, or claws.

What an incredible drawing!!
Check out those wrinkle marks on the elephant's torso.
What a furry fox this is!
Children created these drawings from real images of animals taken from various DC zoo calendars donated to the Murch art department by the amazing Murch parents. Keep those donations coming!

In this class children learned to identify simple math shapes by looking at more complicated figures.

Eric Carle Animal Collages Display Up in the Lobby

You are invited to view the Eric Carle collages created by Ms. Mahar's class in their collage unit.

Children first studied and made several guesses about how Eric Carle might use his brush to make the marks they see on his painted paper collages. And as in every large project, we began with sketching our animals.
Here are some sample painted paper we used to create our collages.
Here are some observations we made in looking closer at how Eric Carle might have created his collages.
sample work from the children. To see more come to Murch and enjoy the collages.

Pre-K Identify ALL the Lines They Know

Kids use white oil pastels to draw lines on black paper. We learned what makes lines different than shapes, then listed all the different types of lines they know; all the way down to alphabet letters that are made up of lines.

This artist made a very long straight line on his paper.
This artist used many straight lines next to one another.

This artist uses some bumpy lines to make flowers.

This artist is very focused on his job.
After, children turned their paper around and used the new lines they learned to make a drawing.

5th Graders and "Movie"-Making Unit

During the last session, 5th graders created a movie using digital camera still of clay figures moving a tiny bit each frame. I will be uploading those images and creating a movie-slide show for you to view soon. The children enjoyed making this movie and if you ask them, I'm sure you too could make one at home with any toy.

This current session below shows the children working on a class-wide hand-cranked movie scroll in which all their scenes will be included. More to come later.

3rd Graders Create and Color Designs Using ONLY One Shape

4th Graders Create Christopher Myers-Inspired Collages Depicting a Scene from King Midas

Children in Ms. Fitzpatrick's Class Draw Animals Using Shapes

These are the amazingly focused artists in Kindergarten using and combining simple shapes to make very elaborate drawings of familiar animals. Notice how the kids are REALLY looking at the image they are working from and not just resorting to the "recipe" image they might have in their mind.

Changes to the site....

At the beginning of the year I sent out a permission slip asking parents to allow the Murch Art Department to post images of their child on the blog. I have gotten back about 90% of them so up to now I've been posting ONLY pictures of children's hands working on their projects allowing enough time for these releases to make it back to me. It's obvious that something is being robbed from these posts by not showing these children's faces actually enjoying the work they are creating or the depth of their concentration.

As a parent myself, I love to see albums of my child posted in his class' website and love to share them with extended family from out-of-state. Therefore, after much internal debating, I have decided that I will begin posting images of the children's faces along with their hands as well as pictures of groups of kids working. Most times I will only title the image with the label "artist" or at most the child's first name if at all.

If you prefer to NOT have your child's face on the blog at all EVER please contact me immediately and I will make a note of it on my class log. In addition, if you see a post using your own child's image and you'd like to have it removed, please contact me immediately.

Please let me know your thoughts....I am open to tweaking this framework as needed.