The Ratner School Art Program

We had a week filled with tree cutting, portrait creations, jungle animals and a phenomenal field trip. And this is just the art program at the Ratner School! I was so proud of the students and their behavior both at the field trip and with the substitute teacher. I am looking forward to taking the remainder of the students to MOCA after the Thanksgiving break. I hope you all enjoy the time with your families and know that I am very thankful for the opportunity to guide your children as their art teacher. I do love my job.

This was the general reaction seeing the work of Do Ho Suh at MOCA

Kindergarten Art

This was the final week for our Native American unit in art and humanities. The Kindergarten students painted their designs on the brown paper ti-pees and created the stands for the thunder bird designs. The final pieces will be on display for the school wide Thanksgiving lunch on Tuesday and then they can take them home to be displayed for your enjoyment. Ask them to tell you the story they created using the pictographs, they are very interesting.

The assembly of the thunder birds and ti-pees are a large part of my Thanksgiving tradition!

The growing ti-pee village

1st and 2nd Grade Art

The students finished the final work on the Rousseau jungle piece this week. The animals were inventive and well drawn. I love the dimensional building skills the artists gained while working on the project. I hope you had a chance to see the finished pieces in the hallways when you came in for conferences. They were very excited to see them displayed and I heard many great comments about the work. That was a fun project for them and me!

3rd and 4th Grade Art

We began the prep work for our ti-pee build this week in art. The students worked on the symbols and pictographs used by the Native American people and deciphered the meanings of the symbols while trying to tell a story. The second class of the week involved going into the woods to cut trees for our ti-pee. The students enjoyed picking just the right saplings to cut and showed good team work in using the saws. I think they found a new appreciation for the skills and effort it takes to cut trees! 

5th and 6th Grade Art

The students continued work on the cut portrait assignment this week. I presented the level of detail you can achieve using the x-acto knife, demonstrating the many details in an eye. The students are beginning to see the various value changes and details in their portraits and are gaining greater control of the tools. One class had a substitute teacher on Thursday so I could take a group to MOCA, and they were still well focused on their work and proceeded to work as expected. I was glad (but not surprised) to get a good report from the substitute teacher.

Notice the value details beginning to take shape.

7th and 8th Grade Art

We had a fantastic experience on Thursday on our field trip to MOCA. The 7th and 8th grade students proved themselves capable leaders, setting great examples for the 3rd and 4th grade students. They were engaged, focused and seemed to have a great time at MOCA. I hope they all told you about the art they saw and many commented that they wanted to come back to see the show again to spend more time experiencing the art.