1st, 2nd, 3rd Grade Art

We began our class this week with an in-school field trip to the front lobby to view the newspaper painting display. One of the core principles of our art curriculum is how to view and talk about art in an intelligent way. We began the discussion with the thought that we may not like or understand the art that we view. With this age group, much of the intent is to add the vocabulary of art and the skill to critique without hurting feelings. We practiced some of the language and talked about expectations for behavior in a gallery or museum setting. Each class went to the "gallery", which in this case was the school's front lobby, and had a short discussion with their partner about the work. This is a slow process to hopefully get the group ready for the yearly partnership with MOCA and subsequent field trips to the museum. 

We began our next project, a realistic drawing of flowers from the learning garden. Each student had an arrangement in a vase with fresh flowers to draw. We talked about scale, line and detail. I showed the class how to draw a table for the flower vase to sit on and how to take their time to draw what they observed. We will begin the watercolor work today.

I love having fresh flowers for the students to draw! The art room looks beautiful.