Open House 2015-2016

This year I am again attending the 5th Grade Open House night at Hillcrest. Below is what I am passing out to all parents who make it to my classroom:

5^th and 6^th Grade Art—Room 126—Miss Brown

Hello and Welcome to Art Class,

This is my seventh year teaching a Hillcrest Intermediate and I am excited to continue sharing my knowledge of visual arts with my students. I communicate via skyward and my blog about things happening in the art room. Please subscribe to my blog by clicking ‘Join this Site’ on the right hand side under ‘Followers’.

http://missbrownsartblog.blogspot.com/

I am also trying out Artsonia this year. It is a place where images of student artwork is uploaded and can be viewed through a personal student account. I am still in the process of loading my rosters onto the site. When I’m completed Artsonia should email you asking for your permission for the artwork to be visible. I copied a sample of what the email should look like below. You will just click ‘Activate Account’ and then enjoy all the perks Artsonia has to offer. It’s not only an online digital art collection of your child’s artwork, they also offer various items that the artwork can be printed onto for purchase. A small portion of the proceeds come back to the art room for extra supplies too.

https://www.artsonia.com/

I’m happy to announce that we successfully raised enough money for 5 iPads for the classroom! They should be arriving soon and we’ll start making art with them asap. Stay tuned to my blog to see what we do.

Please always feel free to email me with any questions you may have about my class.

Miss Molli Brown

Here is a slideshow of past student work for display while parents are walking through my classroom.
 

Start of the year...Quick but Awesome Projects

This year both grades did a quick one-day project to start the year off. Both served as a little review of info from last year and acted as a warm-up for the students' creativity. Sixth graders created symmetrical designs in 4 sections of a circle using oil pastel, cut them apart and placed them in various positions on a square of paper. When the designs were all put together they created one larger collaborative artwork. We also discussed two principles of design, unity and variety.

• Unity-Unity is achieved when the components of a work of art are perceived as harmonious, giving the work a sense of completion.
• Variety- Use of different elements of art to add interest to an artwork. Variety is a principle of design.
• Symmetry- exact balance on opposite sides of a dividing line of an item.
• Collaborative Art- More than one artist contributed to the resulting art piece. The artists involved worked together.

Fifth graders had a fun and messy color review. They also did great following the art room procedures that they are getting used to. They used only the primary colors and mixed them to create the secondary colors. Each color was stamped onto a collaborative rainbow artwork. They're really cheering up the hallways of the school too!

• color-  is light reflected off of objects. Color has three main characteristics: hue (the name of the color, such as red, green, blue, etc.), value (how light or dark it is), and intensity (how bright or dull it is).
• primary colors- are the only true colors (red, blue, and yellow). All other colors are mixes of primary colors.
• secondary colors- are two primary colors mixed together (green, orange, violet).
• color wheel-A circular organization of the colors on the color spectrum.

WE ARE GETTING iPADS!!!!!

Thank you all so much for donating to my classroom fund for iPads! I am so grateful for all your support and so excited to get to use them with students to show them how technology and art can work together. I put this out there not really expecting anything but just hoping that I would get support. You have all blown me away with your generous giving. You are all amazing!

I'm already planning ways in which I can incorporate technology into existing lesson plans and coming up with new lessons focused around use of the iPads. I know the students are excited and quite frankly, so am I! Thank you again, and stay tuned to this blog if you'd like to see ways in which we use the iPads. I'll try and post as much as I can on here.

With gratitude,
Miss Brown

Enjoy this artwork, created on an iPad, by artist David Hockney. Click it for more info.

DonorsChoose.org--iPads for the Art Room--& Welcome Back!!

Hello Hillcrest parents and students! I would like to introduce myself to you all. My name is Molli Brown and I am one of the two art teachers at Hillcrest. First, I have a special announcement---

Before I get into the basic info I typically write at the beginning of the year, I'd like to ask all the parents for a huge favor. I want to make learning about art as amazing as I possibly can for your children and I feel one way to do that in the 21st Century is to give students access to technology when it's needed. This year every classroom at Hillcrest was given 5 iPads, EXCEPT for the art rooms. I currently have ZERO iPads in my room. I would like to try and change that by asking for your help. I've created a project on DonorsChoose.org. For the next 7 days (until August 28th) they will match any donation you give, DOLLAR for DOLLAR (enter the word SPARK upon checking out to get them to match the donation). Even if you can only give $1, it would help!! Anything would help. I have so many exciting ideas to help make art more relevant to students with the use of the iPads. If you're interested in reading more, please visit my project page and consider donating. The donation stays open until December 18th. Spread the word to anyone you think might help. Thank you in advance!

Here's the link----> iPads for the Art Room

    

And now for the other important start of the year info.....

 I am excited for the coming year, as always, and ready to create some awesome projects with your children! I will be teaching both fifth and sixth grade students and will try to post on this blog as often as possible to communicate things the students might need to bring in, or just to show you cool photos of their work. I recommend subscribing to the blog so you can get an email notification every time I create a post. You can do that by clicking 'Join this site' on the right hand side of the blog in the 'Followers' section.

 Again this year, all fifth and sixth grade students are required to bring in a folder for class. The folders do not need to be anything fancy, just as long as they have two pockets on the inside. Please, NO binders. The folders can be any color or pattern; they just need to bring them to art class for 10 points toward their grade. They will be given the first two cycles to bring one in.

 I will be attending the 5th grade open house on Thursday, September 10th. If you’d like to see the art room, please feel free to stop down and check it out. I hope to meet a lot of the parents of the wonderful students I’ve already met. I’m looking forward to a fantastic year!

 -Miss Brown

Little Bits STEM+ Art= STEAM Summer Camp

I've now finished my second summer teaching a Little Bits summer camp. This year I got to work with Mrs. Teems on the camp and we had a blast. The kids made some amazing projects and learned so much about the circuitry using inputs in combination with various outputs while designing and building a bunch of different projects. Not only were the kids given challenge projects, like building a vehicle, they also had time to just tinker and experiment with the bits to make new inventions. Here are some pictures and short videos of the kids explaining their projects and some of just the projects turned on. I hope you enjoy this! I definitely did.  :)

Stop Motion Video Summer STEM Camp ART+Technology!

Here's a few photos and all the videos our students made in Norwin's summer STEM (or STEAM as I like to call it--the a for ART  :) camp. This camp focuses on incorporating art and technology as students learned how to create various types of stop motion videos. They worked with two apps to create their videos--iMotion and iMovie. Not only did they become pros at using both apps and learned how to create some amazing mini movies, they also learned how to work together with others. It was difficult at times because the kids were very passionate about what they wanted their movies to look like, but overall it was a great learning experience for everyone. Here are they types of stop motion movies they created:

• Whiteboard 
• Inanimate Objects 
• Claymation 
• Cut Paper/Assemblage

The videos plus some pictures are in the slideshow here. All of the videos are also saved onto this YouTube playlist.
 

5th Grade Keith Haring Paintings and Sculptures

Objective(s)—SWBAT…

• Recognize the work of Pennsylvania born artist Keith Haring.
• Sketch the basic and simplified structure of a human figure.
• Show active movement within figure drawing.
• Apply appropriate marks around the figure to enhance the suggestion of movement.
• Create figure drawings in the likeness of Keith Haring’s.
• Select an appropriate figure drawing to become a 3D figure sculpture.
• Create a 3D figure sculpture in the likeness of Keith Haring’s artwork.
• Paint and outline all figures created for final project neatly.