Songfest 2010

DINNER AND SONGFEST - We would like to remind all parents that our annual Songfest will take place this coming Thursday December 16th. The DPTO will be selling Holiday food an hour before the student presentations, which will be starting promptly at 6:00 p.m. We invite all parents and students to come at 5:00 p.m. for supper, to catch up with friends, purchase the Choir CD and the Discovery School cookbook for holiday gifts, and enjoy the presentations our students have been working on. The program should last about one hour and thirty minutes. We hope to see you all there.

Nursery and PreK - Kindergarten and Grade 1 December 13-16

Ooblick! Everybody Loves Ooblick!

All of our youngest students will be experimenting with ooblick! It is a liquid and a solid. Equal parts of water and corn starch make a curious mix - you can pick it up and hold it but if you relax your hold it will ooze out between your fingers. Great sensory exercise for young fingers.

Kindergarten and First Grade November 22-24, November 29-December 3, 2010

Kindergarten and first grade classes will be continuing explorations of line, shape and color. They will use water colors and something special to add texture and dimension to their compositions.

Nursery and PreK - November 22-24, November 29-December 3, 2010

Nursery and Preschool students are having fun with Snow Dough. They will be continuing to squish, squeeze and roll and pat the dough into all kinds of shapes and forms. They are exercising their fingers and their imaginations.

Grade 1 - November 15-18, 2010

This week students will use the pencil eraser to stamp designs with paint on colored paper.

Kindergarten November 15-18 2010

Kindergarteners will use pencil erasers to stamp designs using tempera paint and colored paper.

Nursery and PreK - November 15-18, 2010

Students will take a walk looking for interesting rocks. They will take them back to the classroom and paint them with bright colors. They will also work on some holiday crafts for Thanksgiving.

Grade 1 - November 8-12

Last week students with lines by using a "fist full" of crayons to move around their paper to create interesting pictures with "tangles" of color.



This week they will be experimenting with lines to make unusual shapes. They know about the circle, square, rectangle, triangle, and oval but what kind of shape is made when a zig-zag line and a waving line are connected by a straight line?

Kindergarten November 8-12, 2010

Kindergarteners will look at The Croquet Game (1892) by Pierre Bonnard and discuss the composition. What is happening in this picture? Can they find the dog? Where is the ball? Is there another game being played in the background? Can they guess what game the children are playing.

Then they will draw their own compositions of a game they like to play with their friends or family.

Nursery and PreK - November 8-12, 2010

We haven't finished playing with our cloud dough. So, we will be squeezing, patting, pinching and rolling our dough into fun shapes. Great exercise for our fingers and our imagination.

Nursery and PreK - November 1-5, 2010

Like every area or department at Discovery School the Art Department activities are guided by a curriculum that identifies educational standards in Visual Arts.

A curriculum “map” is developed that helps assure that classroom activities and lessons support the goals and standards of the school’s curriculum. The map ties “skills to be developed” to standards. Lessons and Activities (what kids are doing in class) are linked directly to the skills to be developed. The following is a partial list of skills that we are working on developing in Art with Nursery and Pre-K students.

Skills to Be Developed – Students will:
Demonstrate developing fine motor skills in: drawing, cutting, folding, painting, modeling, pasting/gluing, printing and stamping/printing techniques. Progress through the 3 stages of scribbling to the pre-schematic and schematic stages of drawing. Create artworks that commemorate personal events. Create artworks that represent self and others.
Create, look at, describe and respond to works of art.
Identify people who make art as artists.
Use words that describe their work and the works of others.

Art Across the Curriculum
Our young students use art making materials and techniques across the curriculum. For example, cutting and pasting a craft project to reinforce cognitive learning in pre-reading activities or to support math concepts.

Art Activity - Lesson
In the first Art lesson, this week, students will measure flour, water, and cooking oil (math concepts) to make “cloud dough”. Then they will strengthen their little fingers and hands by squishing, pinching and patting (fine motor skills) the ingredients into stiff dough. The dough will rest overnight.

The next Art lesson they will look at pictures of abstract sculptures and be introduced to the concept of sculpture. Then they will make a nice thick “cookie” out of the dough they made yesterday.

Next they will insert a long piece of uncooked spaghetti in the dough. Now they will carefully thread colorful Fruit Loop cereal “O’s” onto the spaghetti (fine motor skills). They are free to choose any color pattern they would like. Maybe we will count our “O’s” as we put them onto the “tower” (math concepts). When that spaghetti “tower” is full they can start another one until their “cookie” of dough is full of colorful towers.

They have created a colorful, abstract, edible sculpture and so much more.

Cloud Dough

1 cup vegetable oil 6 cups flour 1 cup water food coloring

Add food coloring to water. Put the flour and oil into a large bowl. Slowly add the water, stirring as you pour. Continue mixing the ingredients until a soft dough forms. Add a little more water or flour if necessary. Knead until completely blended

Nursery and PreK - Sensory Tubs

Sensory Tubs are Tubs of Fun

Sensory tubs are large plastic bins fill with a any one of a variety of substances that are fun for little fingers to explore. Everything from sand to old coffee grounds can be found in our tubs. We had two different tubs on this day. One was filled with all kinds of beans and rice the other with different kinds of pasta shapes. OooOOooOOOeeegooooey it was fun!!!

Kindergarten and Grade 1 October 4-8 October 12-15

Last week we made line designs using colored yarn as our lines and glued them to our papers.

This week we will explore drawing to tell a story.

Nursery and PreK - October 12-15

Nursery and Pre K students will be experimenting with cornstarch and water. They will use squirt bottles of colored water and then they will mix it with their hands making a wonderful gob of "ooblick ". Great exercise for our fingers and for our brains...is it art or is it science?

Kindergarten and Grade 1 September 27-October 1

We are taking a line for a walk through our day. Using the sides of our crayons we will make the line "jump" out of bed, brush our teeth and even move as we chew our breakfast and ride to school. These should be interesting and fun pictures of moving lines and colors.

Nursery and PreK - September 27 to October 1

Mark making continues to be our focus. This week we will take our "car" markers out for a drive across big paper spread on the table or floor. Other marking materials will be avialable in the art activity center in the classroom.

Kindergarten and Grade 1 September 20-24

Introducing the Shape Family

The first member of the shape family is the square. Students will use different sizes and colors of squares to create a robot. They will be practicing their cutting and pasting skills along with their fantastic imaginations.

Nursery and PreK - September 20-24

This week our youngest Discovery students will continue to explore mark making with a variety of materials; crayons, markers, and chalk on papers and paint brushes on the sidewalk. They will exercise their fine and gross motor skills by using the different materials on different surfaces. As always with our young folks it is the process that is most satisfying.

Kindergarten and Grade 1 September 6-10

The Curved Line Family

Objectives of this Week's Lesson are continued from last week.

• Actively identify types of line in the environment.
• Accurately demonstrate an understanding of how curved lines can be used in art.
• Learn a little about how artist get ideas.
• Demonstrate skill and craftsmanship in gluing (learn techniques).

We will meet the curved line and its family of cousins. We will look for curved lines in master art works and in our environment. Then we will draw with curved lines only. In our second lesson we will make curving shapes from flat papers.

Above are examples of some of our straight line art works.

Nursery and PreK - September 6-10

Introducing Sensory Tubs

This week we are introducing sensory tubs. We know that the sense of touch is powerful and key to our learning processes. It is important for young people to have a wide variety of tactile experiences. Sensory tubs give your young one the opportunity to explore a variety of materials thoroughly without being told to - "be careful", "don't play with your food", "don't spill" or "don't get dirty". Each week we will explore two different materials, one wet (ooey gooey) and one dry. This week one tub will be full of cooked pasta shapes and the other one will have a variety of dry beans and rice. Hmmm, I wonder what we will cook up next week?

Kindergarten and Grade 1 August 30-September 3

What is a line? What are the types of lines?

Objectives of this Week's Lesson

Actively identify types of line in the environment
Accurately demonstrate an understanding of how straight lines can be used in art
Learn a little about how artist get ideas
Demonstrate skill and craftsmanship in gluing (learn techniques)

To meet our objectives we will:
o walk in straight curved and zig-zagging lines,
o find straight lines in our environment
o look at the work of artists who use straight lines- Mondrian, Kandinsky, Stella
o make line designs using strips of construction paper and glue sticks

Nursery and PreK - August 30-September 3

More About Mark Making

Young children are fascinated by their ability to make marks. There are several stages that preschoolers go through in the making of marks, from fly drawing to energetic and large movements over the surface. Children start naming their marks and as their skills develop they begin to make shapes that will increase in complexity.

At this stage it is the movement, the engagement in the process that the student enjoys. It is the process that is our objective – the mental process that the child is engaged in when he or she takes a crayon and touches it to paper. We want to give them lots of opportunities to explore mark making.

This week the Nursery and PreK classes will play with the idea of lines that move. We will use the oil pastels to make marks, each in their own way. Then we will use watercolors to create interesting backgrounds.

Grade 1 August 23-27

Looking for Lines, Patterns and Shapes

First grade students have listened to the story “Where the Wild Things Are”. They have looked carefully at the lines, patterns and shapes in the illustrations. Then they have used their imaginations to create their own wild things using oil pastels. This week they will look at more lines and use them in different ways.

Kindergarten August 23-27

Where the Wild Things Are

Kindergarten students have listened to the story “Where the Wild Things Art”. They have looked carefully at the lines, patterns and shapes in the illustrations. Then they have used their imaginations to create their own wild things using oil pastels. This week they will look at more lines and use them in different ways.

Nursery and PreK - August 23-27

All Kinds of Lines

Our youngest students are discovering all the things they can make their fingers do. This week and throughout the year they will be exploring mark making. They will be playing with all kinds of lines and exploring lots of different ways to make lines. It’s not just about crayons.

We will be referring to Viktor Lowenfeld’s classic art education text “Creative and Mental Growth and Development” as we plan activities to support your child’s development.

“If you want to do something good for a child give him an environment where he can touch things as much as he wants.” Buckminster Fuller, Letter to Children on Earth