Grade One
Art is a universal language. It has the power to transcend cultural variations, uniting us all. By cultivating an understanding and appreciation for artists’ works of the past and present, art education develops respect for diverse cultures and creative expressions.
Art is woven into every aspect of our lives, and learning about how and why artists, designers and advertisers use the elements of art will enable students to make intelligent informed decisions in the future.
We have spent the first three months of school together getting to know each other and exploring the world of color. As we become more aware of the color all around us, we learned about three special colors; the primary ones. We tried blending them in different ways to create new colors. We discussed rainbows and prisms. We made monoprints; a one of a kind crayon form of printing. We talked about trees and why trees are so important to us and created giant leaves with blended color using a new medium; water crayons. Our imaginations were stretched with leaf creatures, a drawing project. We have recently been studying the elements of geometric and organic shape. We are learning the differences between natural and manufactured shape. We continue to utilize the elements of color studied earlier. Projects will continue to build upon themselves throughout the school year, and all your child’s years here at Maple Ave.
This year has started off with a bang! The students began the year with a variety of gross motor skilled activities. These activities are designed to get the students exploring and moving their bodies in a variety of ways. One of their favorite activities that we did during this unit was active reading. During this activity, I read them a few different books. While I was reading, they got to move around like the animals that were mentioned in the books, along with making the noises that the animals made. The students moved in a variety of styles (skipping, galloping, running, etc.). We worked on this unit for the month of September, each week changing the activities but keeping our focus on body control and awareness. After finishing up this unit, the students were introduced to soccer. Here they learned a little bit of the history of the game, while spending most of their time learning some of the basic skills needed to play. The students practiced dribbling under control, passing with the inside of their foot, as well as several different ways to trap and control the ball. They really enjoyed playing “sharks and minnows” during this unit! The classes recently finished off a new unit called “Fall Games”. This unit worked on throwing through a variety of different games and activities. The “stinky pumpkin” game was the big hit in this new unit. We are moving into our basketball unit, in which we will cover the history, along with dribbling, passing, and shooting! It should be a fun unit!
Music:
It has been a great first trimester in first grade! Many students have sung their names for the class in our “hello song.” Students are also becoming very comfortable using hand signals when singing solfege (do re mi fa sol la ti do.) Ask your child to demonstrate the solfege hand signals for you! Students have also learned to understand and recognize basic music notation.
We sang a great song about Robot Boy and all of the things that he likes to do, we also re-wrote the words as a class to make our very own Robot Girl song!
A big focus lately has been on identifying the difference between pitch and volume. This concept can be very abstract for first graders, and the two can be confused easily. Students know this saying by heart now: “the bigger the instrument, the lower the sound.”
This trimester we have sung some really silly songs including “Ladybug in My Soda” and “Hip Hop Turkeys.”
In the coming trimester we will begin to shift our focus to musical expression and begin to look deeper into some musical notation.
Art is a universal language. It has the power to transcend cultural variations, uniting us all. By cultivating an understanding and appreciation for artists’ works of the past and present, art education develops respect for diverse cultures and creative expressions.
Art is woven into every aspect of our lives, and learning about how and why artists, designers and advertisers use the elements of art will enable students to make intelligent informed decisions in the future.
We began the new school year together by discussing and reviewing the concepts of color in art and our everyday lives. We took advantage of harvest time and drew colorful fruit and veggies in color groups, trying to remember as many of each color as we could. We became reacquainted with the primary colors, and mixed them to make secondary colors. We talked about rainbows and their relationship to the color wheel and what creates a prism. We discovered the difference between hot and cold colors and how they effect our perception of certain objects. Autumn foliage was the perfect vehicle to create beautiful trees. We have been studying the element of shape recently. We know that shape is made of a line that is connected. Spirals were used to illustrate that a line becomes a shape. We constructed objects from geometric shapes. We talked about the difference between manufactured and natural shapes and discovered that every manufactured shape starts out as a natural one! We also continue to utilize the elements of color we learned earlier. Projects continue to build upon themselves throughout the school year.
We are off to another fast start in second grade! We began the year with a variety of activities that work on gross motor skills. These activities are used to get the students moving in a variety of ways that are not traditionally practiced, and also help with tracking their motor skill development. We work on movements like running, walking, jogging, skipping, galloping, sidestepping, crab-walking, and several others. After a couple of weeks focusing on gross motor skills, we moved into cooperative games. These are activities designed to get the classes working together toward a common goal, in turn, building a stronger sense of community amongst the students. During this unit the students really focused on using positive communication. They needed to verbalize their thoughts and listen to their peers. This was a great unit to watch unfold as well as experience with each class. The students made some great strides in working together and having a common goal be the big picture. The classes then moved into our soccer unit. Here they focused on dribbling, passing, and trapping. Watching the students begin to control their passes using the proper kicking technique was amazing. During first grade, they really struggle to use the inside of their foot when striking the ball, but this year they really did awesome! Our new “Fall Games” unit was a blast this year. During this time we focused on throwing by playing a variety of games. I am sure you heard all about the “stinky pumpkin” game we played. The students really had a blast with this activity. We have now begun our Basketball unit, which will take us to our break at the end of December.
Music:
It has been a great first trimester in second grade! Many students have all sung their names for the class in our “hello song.” Students are also becoming very comfortable using hand signals when singing solfege (do re mi fa sol la ti do.) Ask your child to demonstrate the solfege hand signals for you! Students have also learned to understand and recognize basic music notation.
A big focus this trimester has been on musical timbres and the way different instruments sound. Timbre can also influence our mood as the students learned in our gentle sounding song about autumn. In our song “Whacky Ogre” we used boom whackers and other classroom instruments to help us sing a very fun song.
For Thanksgiving, students completed a really silly art project where they constructed turkeys out of music symbols.
The focus the last few weeks has been on patriotic songs. Second grade students did a great job learning “Yankee Doodle” and were able to put all of the mixed up words together like a puzzle.
Art is a universal language. It has the power to transcend cultural variations, uniting us all. By cultivating an understanding and appreciation for artists’ works of the past and present, art education develops respect for diverse cultures and creative expressions.
Art is woven into every aspect of our lives, and learning about how and why artists, designers and advertisers use the elements of art will enable students to make intelligent informed decisions in the future.
We began our third year together reviewing familiar concepts; primary and secondary color, hot and cold color, and the color wheel. We all made our own color wheel with a theme to keep and refer to. We looked at various landscape paintings, and then made one, emphasizing the horizon line, then added color with only primary colors; a challenge when you must have all the colors of the color wheel present! We learned about the color scheme called complementary, and tried an eye/brain exercise to experience after-imaging. We then put the knowledge to use with an op art project using complements. We created beautiful autumn impressionistic paintings entitled scattered leaves. Our most recent project is an abstract one, using geometric design and colored pencil. We continue to build upon the knowledge we have gained in our years together in art. It is a joy to see the students’ enthusiasm and love of learning.
The third graders started the year off with a challenging unit this year, cooperative games. These activities are designed to get the students communicating and working together toward a common goal. The challenges placed before them are very tough, especially when a class is just getting to know each other early in the year. One of the challenges that they had was working together to control a single marker tracing designs on a large paper. This challenge was amazing to watch! The students started off pretty rocky and really struggled. After a short time their communication skills really began to take over and their whole attitude changed. When they began the task, they couldn’t even move the marker six inches without it coming off the paper. By the end, they were completing mazes! These activities really help develop a sense of community in the classroom. The students moved into soccer after the cooperative games unit. Here they played several new games to work on their dribbling and passing skills. The growth between second and third grade is amazing and very noticeable when watching them work with the balls. Their favorite activity was “sharks and minnows”. This is a dribbling activity that really stresses making good decisions, while maintaining good ball control. The students really had a good time participating in our “fall games” unit. This unit was a group of classes that worked on a variety of skills (kicking, throwing, running, etc.) in a variety of fall themed activities. The students are now into their basketball unit, which not only teaches the fundamentals, but the history of the sport. I look forward to watching them grow and explore new games/activities while developing their motor skills.
It has been a great first trimester in third grade! Students have all sung their names for the class in our “hello song.” Students are also becoming very comfortable using hand signals when singing solfege (do re mi fa sol la ti do.) Ask your child to demonstrate the solfege hand signals for you! Students have also learned to understand and recognize basic music notation.
For the first part of the trimester we have learned a lot about musical expression. Students have drawn pictures while listening to music. Students have done a great job making connections between visual art and music.
For the past few weeks we have been busy preparing for our upcoming recorder unit. The students have actually been completing math exercises in music class! This will help us be able to read the notes and play more accurately when we have the recorders. Ask your child to sing the song “Rhythm is Math” for you!
Art is a universal language. It has the power to transcend cultural variations, uniting us all. By cultivating an understanding and appreciation for artists’ works of the past and present, art education develops respect for diverse cultures and creative expressions.
Art is woven into every aspect of our lives, and learning about how and why artists, designers and advertisers use the elements of art will enable students to make intelligent informed decisions in the future.
It is a treat to instruct fourth graders in art! We can be more in depth with our vocabulary of art and projects that we can create. We started our year with a complete review of what we have learned about color in art and our world. Work on a tree color sampler utilized all our color concepts and employed some useful art techniques. Students self-assessed on the knowledge they retained.
Ancient and living cultures are a wonderful way to learn about our world and appreciate the diversity surrounding us. We studied the art of the Abenaki people of NH and VT. The style, subject matter, and materials used were (and still are) determined by what the environment provided. Replicas of birch bark boxes were constructed with care put into the authenticity of the design. Tomah Joseph was a Passamaquoddy guide and artist who made birch bark items to sell to tourists who vacationed in Maine in the early 1900s. We discussed his relationship with the Roosevelt family. I was happy to share my Abenaki heritage with the students.
Fourth graders are true explorers! There is nothing that they aren’t willing to try to conquer. During fourth grade the students are truly challenged not just mentally, but physically too! The classes started the year off with cooperative games that are designed to get the classes working together and building a strong community. The first couple of warm-up challenges were met with ease! However the challenges quickly got a lot more difficult! They were not as straight forward and really required good communication and complete cooperation to complete them. The river raft challenge was a true test of their ability to work together and stay positive. The students were given a mat (raft) and tennis balls, and asked to get the mat across the gym without it touching the floor. Two class members had to ride the raft as it made its way across the river. This was a blast to watch each class conquer this challenge. This unit was followed up by several weeks of soccer. Here they worked on honing in their skills of kicking, trapping, and dribbling. The classes also explored how the game has evolved over time along with changes in equipment. This was a great way to mix history in with physical education! The classes then moved into our new “fall games” unit. This unit works on a variety of activities (kicking, throwing, running, etc.) in a number of activities that have a fall theme to them. The classes really enjoyed playing the stinky pumpkin game! The classes are now working on their basketball unit, which should be exciting to watch with a number of new activities to teach!
We have been hard at work on our winter musical! We are rehearsing as a middle school chorus would during class to prepare for next year! I think all families are going to be VERY impressed. I thank all of the students for their hard work on memorizing the words and the movements to all of the songs. I also thank students who have taken extra time during recess to help prepare for the concert! It’s going to be great!
