Friday, May 25, 2012

What a Wonderful Artful Year it has Been!



Art classes this year kept extremely busy with upper classes creating unique clay sculptures or clay pots. First through third grades painted clay pots for Mother's Day. They also spent an art class outside potting dirt and burying seeds in their lovely art pieces. Kinders spent a lot of energy cutting out hearts out of clay to create a gift for their mothers or some special in their life. Students learned a lot about the nature of clay or simply the nature of nature through all of these projects. Clay while quite fun to work sometimes will break when drying or delicate pieces can break when being handled while painting. Seeds sometimes without the right amount of water and light might not grow. Some of our students learned these lessons first hand. I tried to make sure my students know that sometimes these things happened. All we can do sometimes in these instances is take the information we learned and apply it to future explorations in art and nature. 

The school year is over now for the summer; however surprises await because I plan to add more to the blog over the summer. Stay tuned for more art related news when you and the kids feels it is too hot to enjoy the great outdoors. 

Signing off for now,

Miss. Damore

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

What are First Fridays?

First Fridays is an event held by ArtLink, Inc (a Phoenix volunteer arts organization) that happens every first Friday of every month. The event has been said to be one the nation’s largest art walks with over 70 art venues open for free! It takes place every month from 6-10 pm. You can find a detail map at this Downtown Phoenix Journal link HERE that allows you to see where the different participating art galleries, venues, and other art inspirational spaces are in downtown Phoenix.  Parking is available at the Phoenix Art Museum as well as free shuttle rides. Come and experience First Fridays with your young ones. You may love it so much that it become a new family event to look forward to every month.
Check out ArtLink http://artlinkinc.wordpress.com/site for more details. You can also view photos of previous First Friday's at this about.com link HERE.
If you do not get a chance to enjoy First Fridays than make room this March for the ArtLink's ART Detour 24 on March 17th and 18th. The Art Detour is similar to First Fridays with the exception of it being an annual two-day event.

Martin Luther King Jr. Art Show

This past Thursday students of the Phoenix Elementary School District were given the chance to display Martin Luther King inspired work at the Capitol Tower. The show is located in the lobby and will be up until February 1st. The show was a great success!
Four different projects were on display from Faith-North. First through second grade classes had on display their MLK Colorful Hand Puzzle Pieces which consisted of students pairing up with another student to trace each other’s hands before finally cutting apart the large paper to create two puzzle pieces. Fourth through fifth graders created three-dimensional MLK Montgomery Boycott inspired buses or portraits of famous civil rights leaders. Kindergarten created yellow buses with multiple color people after hearing the story of Rosa Parks. Only a few of the students’ projects could be in the show from each school, but stop by the front office at Faith-North to see the wonder MLK Color Hand Puzzle Pieces on the bulletin board.
Dunbar school’s second and third grade students made Freedom Crayons with multi-color hands holding hand drawn paper crayons of different colors. The fourth graders dreamed up some “I have a dream” MLK stamps to honor the message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Dunbar Elementary will have their MLK projects displayed out in the hallway near the art classroom.
All of the students worked hard so make sure to come by and see their completed masterpieces.
Photos will be posted so check back in soon.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Seeing Quadruple in Complementary Color Paintings




Students in Chacon’s class and Dunbar’s 6th grade classes created complementary color paintings using watercolor paint. The students first learned how complementary colors work well together and are opposites.  They learned complements of colors can be found by finding the color across from it on the color wheel. They learned red and green, purple and yellow, and blue and orange are complementary colors. Students created a simple design or picture that they drew four times in the four boxes of their paper. Each box needed to be painted with a set of complementary colors. Many students asked if there are three sets of colors what colors would the last box use. Students were allowed to paint one of the boxes any colors they wanted. The successful and wonderful pictures of some of the students’ paintings appear above. This bulletin board display is located in the Faith-North office.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Primary Color Paintings with Kinders






The students of Faith-North created beautiful paintings using the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. They were incredibly excited about painting for the first time. The previous class they were taught the procedures for painting in the classroom and given a demonstration of the painting activity. Then, the students explored creating the secondary colors from the three primary colors. All across the classroom, one could hear the excitement of the students as they mixed the different colors. "Look, I made purple!" "I made brown." The lesson  was a great success in allowing the children to be creative while learning blue and red makes purple. 

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Welcome to the New School Year

Welcome!

My name is Miss. Damore I teach art at Dunbar and Faith-North Elementary schools. I am extremely excited about the new school year. This blog will be used to news and photos related to art work and events taking place at both of these schools.

The site is currently in the developmental stages so check back soon.

~Miss. Damore