Hi Kindergarten and First Grade Families, we have been having a wonderful time in the GLOBE Art Studio this fall. The students are excited and eager to share their work with you, so I am sending home several things today and tomorrow.
Kindergarten students will be bringing home Robot Collages, 3D Lines Sculptures, and Paper Weaving projects this week. Each of the projects helped us try out new techniques and learn new art vocabulary.
If you get a chance, please peek in the main hallway, the kindergarten Molas are displayed and they are beautiful. A mola is a sewn panel made by the Kuna people of Panama. It typically features local wildlife and elaborate designs. We had fun looking at the bright colors and designs of the handcrafted mola and making our replicas colorful and exciting.
weaving
sea turtles and other ocean animals were common in molas
First Graders have been hard at work practicing their embroidered Tapestries these past few weeks. I can't begin to tell you how much I have loved this project and how proud I am of them. (Just stop me in the hall and ask me. I think I have mentioned it too many times to some of my colleagues.) They learned to thread needles and create simple stitches. Many of the students put a handle on their sewn tapestries for display purposes. They each got to make choices about color and design for their tapestries. It was creativity in action! It was hard to stop at the end of each class, and there is nothing better to hear than, "but I want to keep working on it!" I really can't stress enough that seeing them go from struggling to thread a needle, to stitching their own initial or design was a joy.
Students will also be bringing home some Emotional Self-portraits that portray themselves expressing 2 different emotions. Not only did we have to examine what our eyebrows really look like when we are surprised, but we chose colors to help express our emotions.
In the main hallway, I have hung the Amate Bark drawings that first grade completed for Hispanic Heritage month. The ancient people of northern Puebla and Veracruz used the local amate bark as paper, and their shamans created magical paintings that were to bring prosperity to the villages. The original paintings are fantastical and colorful. The students used markers and oil pastels to emulate the paintings.
* I have had a little trouble getting things to stick to the hallway walls, so bear with me while I figure it out.
As always, please contact me with any questions or just to tell how much your child liked art!
Ms. Cottrell
focused on stitches
Amate Bark coloring
