Paper Cranes and Coloring Contests!

Just a quick post to tell you about some interesting things going on in the Specials Dept!  Yup!  That's me!  An entire department....wow!  Fancy!  Anyhow, if you have noticed paper Cranes abounding, do not fear your child has not been secretly crafting these inside their desks during math (not that anyone would EVER do that...I don't know where I would get that idea from...).  Students have been earning these in PE!  We did a brief origami unit in art around Christmas time, and during this time I discovered the kids facination with anything folded paper!  We talked about the Crane being a symbol of unity because Crane's as a species pair up for life. Back in the begininng times of origami in China the rich would make paper cranes for wedding gifts.  It occured to me in PE one day that if there was one thing I would want kids to leave with from elementary PE it would the concept of teamwork, and sportsmanship.  Unity.  A feeling that you can have fun and get fit with out any worries at all about being part of the group. With that, all good lessons need a good incentive, and so the Crane Award is born!  I started a little reluctantly giving out a couple Cranes to my 3rd graders and they LOVED it!  They cheered for the recipients and everything! Then 4-6th started asking about the Cranes!  Now they have really taken off!  I am thrilled to tie specials together and better yet have the kids feeling like an important part of a team!  So there you have it!  Good old Origami in PE.  Oh Mrs. Krug....

Also, you may have had rumors of worksheets being done for art this past week.  It is true, I had to report to Jury Duty and left behind a Jim Dine series coloring contest!  The kids love these!  Next week we will judge them in class!  So excited to see what they remembered about POP art!  And we are on to Valentines Day projects!  

Coming soon....Mothers Day Fundraiser!  Your kids are creating art for jewelry that you can buy to help our class earn some clay!  

Want to help our class out another way?  We could really use a new stash of ultra fine tip black sharpies and baby wipes!  If anyone runs into a great sale and would like to contribute send them in with your student!  Thanks so much for all of your support as always!

Happy New Year!

Hi All!  Typically I wait for the weekend to Blog about our progress for the week, but this week I couldn't wait any longer!  We truly had some exciting things happening!   I also have fun announcements about our after school club and PE!  

First off our K-2 kids were hard at work on weaving!  This project focused on different types of pattern (our first peek at the principals of design), but also allowed us to talk about the job of an artist.  All of our grades have been working to define art this week and this group determined that an Artist is someone who tells a story or expresses their feelings with art.  We talked about our artist of the month, Mark Rothko and his work in art that expresses a feeling and then moved on to being artists telling a story.  Students used their woven paper blankets to create a story about bedtime!  They added portraits and other things to help tell their story!  At the end of class each "artist" got to share with the class!

3rd-6th grade also had a fun week!  It was trading card week for us!  Students learned about the art of Mark Rothko along with abstract expressionism and a dash of color theory!  Students took what they learned and made amazing mini Rothko's in the form of trading cards!  For this project we used washable markers, spray bottles of water and salt to create a really cool effect!  Students then got to name their pieces and we lined all the cards up and did a big LEA trade!  It was so neat to see how many students chose their siblings art with out even knowing!  This was a blast and we are hoping to find a local and out of state school to do future trades with!  

In other news...PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB!  8 super awesome students have been joining me every Wednesday night to learn more about photography!  So far we have worked on holding the camera properly and getting neat angles on all your shots!  This week we are going to start a little work on portraits!  Keep an eye out, these students will be helping out with our yearbook this year!

And last but not least!  I just want to send a shout out to the kids!  You guys are amazing!  I could not teach a more awesome bunch!  These students worked together over the past couple months and helped me win an amazing Fitness Grant to help our school add some new equipment!  We beat out much larger schools and the kids did it with out batting an eye!  So....THANK YOU kids!  

Alright here's the art!

 

Next week we are starting Valentines Day projects!  Older students have already started creating awesome marbled paper to work with!  Ask them about it!

Happy Holidays from Mrs. Krug

Happy Holidays!  You have probably noticed that there have been quite a few less posts here than usual, but don't worry, that just means exciting things to come!  We have been busy in the classroom with a holiday surprise to bring home the night of our holiday program (December 12!).  We have also been busy getting ready for our art show that will be displayed also on December 12 in the lunch room!  And finally, we just finished up a really neat contest project called Math and Music put on by the Phoenix Symphony!

Our Math and Music Contest was an exciting one.  We were challenged to listen to the theme from The Lost World (Jurassic Park) by John Williams and paint a piece about Math!  Pretty fun!  We explored symbols and colors that might really meet the challenge.  We also spent lots of time learning about John Williams the composer of countless movie scores including Home Alone, ET, Star Wars and more!  Below are the finalists that were chosen out of our 102 students who participated!  These lucky guys and gals' art work will move on to the Symphony to compete against other students in the area.  We will find out if we have any Leading Edge winners on April 3rd when we take our all school field trip to the Symphony!

Katelyn Grade 2

Susie Grade 5

Larissa Grade 5

Bella Grade 6

Joshua Grade 4

Dafnie Grade 5

Tyler Grade 6

Joel Grade 6

Allison Grade 5

Cara Grade 4

Jay Grade 5

Brandon Grade 4

Hannah Grade 4

Abby Grade 3

Peter Grade 3

Norah Grade 3

Levi Grade 3

Brianna Grade 3

Gracie Kinder

Logan Kinder

Izzy Grade 1

Zach Grade 1

Flexibility is Key!

This week Mrs. Krug got a valuable lesson in flexibility!  While my dream is to spend 4-5 full days a week teaching kids art, this year I was asked to branch out.  I am officially now the LEA E. Mesa Specials teacher and was excited to offer the kids not only art this week but PE and Music!  That being said, it has definitely been a bit of a gear changer so this week I don't have any student art pictures.  Most classes brought home something to show you this week though, so I am hoping that will tide everyone over!

In art this week students competed in a Georgia O'Keeffe coloring contest!  Remember those!  I used to love coloring contests so I went old school this week and brought them back on a day I had to be out for an amazing conference put on by Harry Wong (teacher celeb!) on classroom management!  The kids blew me away and I had to have help choosing winners!

Students are also competing in a contest put on by the Phoenix Symphony this week and in the coming weeks.  At the end of the year the students will have the opportunity to visit the Symphony and we received information on an art contest tied to that!  The students were asked to listen to the theme from Jurassic Park's The Lost World (by John Williams) and paint their feelings on math and music!  Some neat things are coming soon for this one!

Also coming soon!  Be sure to stop into the Fellowship Hall after our Holiday Program for a little art show!  I can't wait to show off some very special art work! ...and get to meet the families behind these awesome students that I have grown so attached to!

Here is a little tid bit of John Willimas the composer that we are listening to in art class just for fun!  Recognize any of these songs!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXh9K90gC8

Also just ran across this article about the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit in my hometown art gallery!  Amazing to see what some fine art can do for a small community economy!
http://poststar.com/news/local/report-hyde-collection-generated-million-for-warren-county-economy-in/article_6f69c0a2-4805-11e3-b4d1-0019bb2963f4.html

Georgia O'Keeffe vs. Fall

Going into this week I wasn't so sure about how I was going to tie Georgia O'Keeffe to our fall texture and shape lessons, but I think you will see below the kids took everything I gave them and ran with it!  Their projects came out amazing!

Kinder worked on texture in this lesson and created owls that had both visual and physical texture.  They used all sorts of things to complete this project and we had to do many steps, but they were with me every step of the way and their work speaks for itself!

First and Second Grade bowled me over this week with their owl projects!  We talked about how artists have many jobs in the community but one is to use their art to teach people things...like illustrators.  The students learned about studying your subject before setting out to work!  We watched several awesome videos about owls and then used our knowledge of shape to draw our owls.  In this project the kids got to learn about using pastels and layering them to create visual texture!

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grades all worked on larger than life Indian Corn in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe this week.  We talked about abstract art and how you can increase the size of the object on the page to have it make a greater impact on the viewer.

6th Grade learned more about perspective this week when they created 1 point perspective letters!  I am pretty sure that although they would never admit it to me that they loved this project.  I have even seen them doodling these awesome blocky letters here and there over the past week!

Check it out!

 First and Second Grade Owls

 Kindergarten Texture Owls

 Sixth Grade Perspective Letters

 Third, Fourth and Fifth Grade Georgia O'Keeffe Indian Corn Paintings