Farewell to Fall

    The fall season has come and gone so quickly this year.  Our school usually has an autumn harvest concert and a Christmas program, but for a change we have decided to have an Advent program and it will be followed by a winter concert in January.  It gives the students more time to prepare, but we have missed the fun pumpkin, scarecrow and football songs and artwork this year in the music room and art room.  It was the band instructor that suggested this change.



White Luminary Pumpkin for School Display



This is the white pumpkin we used at school while the 6th graders were sculpting the pumpkins.  Having it allowed us to see the ridges in the surface.   We attached 2 pinch pots with plenty of score marks and slip to mold them together.  Dental floss string helped us get the pumpkin ridges started and then they finished sculpting them with pencil tips. It was a very successful project this year.

Glazed pumpkins ready to come out of the kiln



Harvest Pumpkins in Moonlight

Indian Corn (unfinished sample)

unfinished scarecrow sample

Leaves Everywhere by Peter R. gr 5

Raining Leaves by Carley M. gr 5



Ceramic Leaves by Ryanne S gr 5

Hopefully this shows some of the things we have been working on in the past month at school.  It has been a busy time and we are currently involved in some very nice work with a Christmas theme.  I look forward to sharing those soon.

Apple Still Life

http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=210971Here are some art examples that would be a great assignment for fall harvest time. Emma gr 3

The 3rd graders tried it out recently and found great success with the painting and printmaking that was involved with the creation of this still life.

Claire gr 3

Lance gr 3

We had a cluster of real apples in the room when we were doing our opening discussion about artists and creating still life arrangements. I had some examples of Henri Matisse's apple still life. We talked about showing the apples from an overhead viewpoint before we drew on the paper. To provide the children with an easy start, they used a 9 inch lid to get the bowl shape started. They could trace around the edge using their choice of a pencil, a yellow marker or a brown marker.
The next class the children talked about color in terms of warm and cool and we planned to paint the background behind the bowl using warm colors on one side and cool colors on the other side with the possibility of blending them a bit just above and beneath the bowl. Yellow could be used on either side to lighten or brighten either color family. We put the pieces in the drying rack until the next art class.

The third day of class I prepared some cross cut apples to use for printmaking. Red, green, and blue paint were available in portion cups. The students painted directly on the cut apple slice and used it to print. I encouraged steady pressure and showed that a slight twist would produce the clearest print. While the apple print was still wet, they painted in the shadow on the same side as the cool background. They were able to blend it into the apples edge.

The 4th class was used for catching up and adding the indentation and stem using markers. The childrne also made up some kind of repeating pattern to follow along the rim of the bowl. Most apples were sitting in the bowl with the stems facing up, but one or two might be tipped sideways in the bowl.

I thought the children did very well at arranging their compositions and I was impressed by blending skills when the backgrounds were added. I would definitely repeat this assignment in the future.

Tessa gr 3

Peter gr 3

To see more works of art in this same series from all our third graders, please click here. The link will take you to Artsonia where we have placed all the apple still life pojects on exhibit.