Thursday, February 27, 2014

Artists week

Famous Artist:
The children spent time learning about famous artist and their unique techniques they used in their artwork. The children then incorporated the techniques into their own work.
Mondrian Inspired Art:
The children analyzed Mondrian's art, and we noticed that he only used primary colors, as well as squares and rectangles in his artwork.
Below, the friends created a Mondrian inspired collage:





When we came to school on a snow day, we decided to make "snow sculptures" with model magic. They enjoyed creating their sculptures, and telling their friends what they made.






Jackson Pollock
Next, we introduced Jackson Pollock, who was an influential American painter and well known for his unique style of drip painting. 
The children specified what they noticed in his artwork, which lead into a conversation about abstract art.
Pollock would use different objects to drip paint in his canvases. So that is what we did! 
The children transformed our loft into an art studio for the week. They loved getting messy, and splattering paint all over the workspace.





Claude Monet:
Claude Monet was the third artist we introduced. 
Monet was a was a French artist and founder of Impressionist painting. 
We looked through many of his paintings and discussed how a lot of his work is inspired by nature. 

 

Together, we created our own beautiful scenic view using watercolors just like Monet. 


...and then individual pictures using pastels.



Finally, the finished product!




Practicing to sign our names. 










Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Colors Unit


This week we began a new unit, as we started exploring the science of colors.
Colors are a large part of each day in our classroom environment and the world around us. 

First, we were introduced to the primary colors: Red, Yellow and Blue.


 Then, we experimented by painting with the different colors.  

Diana, Chloe and Evan experiment by mixing the primary colors. 


We focused on the each of us being a creative artist, with our individual and unique styles. We noticed that signing our names is important, as famous artists do.  
Perry and Chloe look at the printed letters in their name, as they "sign" their name on their artwork. Isaac proudly displays his art piece as a finished product. 




We discovered how to fill our own palettes, which will be left on the art shelf for our independent use.
Chloe fills the art palette as Noa H. watches and waits for her turn. Noa H. and Geffen then fill their own palettes as well. 






One of the many things we do in Class Bet, is give each friend a sense of independence and confidence. When faced with a "situation", our friends are encouraged to problem solve on their own with the self-help "tools" they are provided.
In the photos below, you will see a glimpse of just that.

Chloe's palette fell on the floor...



...first she wiped her clothes


 ...and then she cleaned the floor.  :)



Geffen's palette had lots of colors on it,  so she decided to wash her palette out so that it can be clean and fresh again.


To help develop our fine motor and math skills, we were challenged to use clothespins and bag clips to lift pom poms and sort them by dropping them in their matching color vase. It was a real challenge. Check out our concentration and how proud we felt once we have accomplished it. 
Our expression says it all!









We created pink and blue goop! We squeezed, pushed and poked both colors together. That's  when we noticed that as the two colors mixed, they turned purple!




Sometimes, one of the best moments are ones that weren't planned.
That's precisely what happened on Wednesday, when it was too cold to go outside, and we had lots of energy to be released!
The Morahs brought twelve empty cardboard boxes into the classroom, and we did  the rest. We came up with such creative ideas, as we each imagined our box to be something different, like rocket ships, boats etc.



Secondary Colors:
As we continued experimenting by mixing the colors, we discovered some new results! 
We used red, blue and yellow paint, mixed them with one another and created orange, green, and purple paint. We learned that these colors are called Secondary Colors.
This is how we figured it out:

 Each one of us chose a color to paint on our hands...




...and after shaking hands with our friends, the color in both hands began to change.












.... that's how we discovered secondary colors!

Within the next few weeks, we will be exploring the artwork styles of different famous artists.

We began the Famous Artists Unit by looking at a picture of Piet Mondrian and some of his art pieces. 
We described what we saw:  

Isaac: "rectangles"
Arieh: "yellow and white"
Chloe: " Colors, tiny squares"
Evan: "white"



Then we all worked together to create an art piece inspired by Mondrian's work. We  used black tape for the lines and primary colors to fill it in the shapes we have created with the tape. 
Diana, Arieh, Chloe, Evan and Chana work on the Mondrian inspired group art. 




Noa M. , Evan and Chloe use their fine motor skills to unroll and cut off pieces of colored tape:







Isaac and Jo Jo mix water and snow powder to fill up our sensory table:



Geffen cleans it all up by using a brush and dustpan!



Since it's winter, and many of us may need to visit the doctor more often, we had a group meeting about going to the doctor, getting checked and how to cover our nose and mouth while coughing or sneezing.
We really loved using the doctor tools to pretend to check each other! 

Noa H. uses the stethoscope to listen to Noa M.'s heartbeat and Sam uses an otoscope to check Diana's ear. 





We all enjoy creating a Band-aid collage. 






Pretending to be doctors was fun!