SmArts 2014-15 Part 3

Chalk Pastels

Our final classes introduced students to the delightful realness and the great results of working with Chalk Pastels.   

 

Elephants and Dragon Flies

The younger student's chalk pastel project were a dragonfly and a baby elephant playing with a big ball.  
 






 


 The older class project was a large African scene featuring both an authentic adult African elephant and tree.  The pastel chalk medium lent itself to creating very believable skin for the elephants bringing them to life on both projects.  

Self Portraits

Janelle - Grade 1

After our first exposure to working with chalk pastels we moved on to pastel self portraits.   In hindsight this was a very advanced level project requiring many hours of one on one, hands on assistance, and in the end some fine tuning via the instructor with the student present.  

Daniel - Grade 1

The sum total of all efforts of students, Brennan School teachers and EA's were certainly worth it.  Our instructor, Carol Barbeau, felt that the basic lesson of bringing to life each student's image registered with each of the children at their individual level of learning.   

Joel - Grade 4

The lesson taught how very important details are. Students learned to seriously think about their own eye color and other details of their eyes, and the unique, individual shape of lips, head, ears, hair, the special shape and hair of eyebrows, skin tone, plus the simple few strokes that create their nose.

Nicole - Grade 6

Once completed, we framed the self portraits and the students presented them to their dads as Father's Day gifts.
























Thanks Carol for volunteering your time to spend several one-on-one classes with our students to see the projects to completion.  Also, I appreciate your input in this blog post!

Father's Day

Frequently here at Brennan School we seem to put more of an emphasis on Mother's Day than Father's Day.  This year that was not the case, for we created several different projects to celebrate the occasion...

 

If it Weren't For You / I Like, But I don't Like...

  In ELA class our grades 1 - 7 students wrote poems for their dad's using models from "For The Love of Language.  This book is a no-fail treasury of poetry writing scaffolds suitable for all ages.

Kindergarten DAD Photos

The idea for our kindergartens' project came from the blog of "That Artist Woman":  http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2013/06/easy-fathers-day-project.html
We had our Ks pose with cardboard letters to spell DAD.  We  hoped to print the photos in sepia, but weren't able to get a clear resolution, so we opted for colour.  Next, we mod-podged them to a stained (thanks Jared) piece of wood. 
(I can't quite figure our how to rotate this photo)
I had to try out the project, so I did one for my brother, so the pics you see are my niece and nephews.

 

 

 

Key Rings for Dad

On Pinterest I found something different for a card - key holders that explain why our students love their dads. http://www.thetaylor-house.com/fathers-day-craft-keychain/
We collected paint samples from some of the local hardware stores.  For rings I found small wire shower curtain rings at Dollarama and tada... here's our project.

 

 

 

 

  Bird Houses

And last, but certainly not least, the gift we presented to each family on the colony whether there's a father in residence or not... bird houses.  Herby, our German teacher had a couple in his classroom.  He had purchased the kits at Dollarama. Robert, our grades 4 - 7 teacher measured it up and we asked our carpenter to bring us a soft lumber. Next, Robert and Kris, one of our high school students took it to the shop and in short order they were back with dozens of parts to assemble into birdhouses.  After gluing them together, we took them back to the shop for a few coats of varnish to make them more durable.  We look forward to hearing about all the feathered families that will be moving into them.