In the next few days your student will be coming home with a flyer for an opportunity for you to purchase their artwork on keepsake items that are perfect holiday gifts for family and friends, at a reasonable price! If you have not already created an account at Artsonia for your student, there will be a form attached to the flyer giving you directions on how to do so.  Every product purchased gives money directly back to the LES art room, and this is the one way Mrs. Bataoel funds the consumables used every day in the art room, and how she purchases iPads and apps for the iPads that the students use.  

If your child enjoys art and/or drama, Illinois State University offers a 5 week course on Saturday mornings for children grades K-8. This is an excellent program that I have enrolled my own children in when they were younger.  

Wow! We have been busy in the art room this month, and the days are just flying by! Some classes are finishing up their amazing art projects, including stained glass windows in fourth grade, totem poles in third grade, and clay coil pots in sixth grade! You can learn more about those projects under the class links in the menu bar to the left.  Last week students helped create three collaborative works of art for the LeRoy Scholarship Auction last weekend.  I look forward to this event every year because the students do such an amazing job creating something for someone else to keep, and its a great lesson for them to realize sometimes when we create something that we are proud of, we need to share it with the community instead of keeping it!  

This is always a fun time of year in the art room for Kindergarten, because they get to use clay for the first time in art!  This lesson collaborates with the Native American unit the students are studying in their classroom.  Students learn that clay is from the earth, and Native Americans used clay to make many vessels including bowls and cups.  Students then get to make their own container using the pinch-pot method.  First, we practice the pinching technique with Play-doh, and once they are ready, the students get to create with clay.  After they are happy with the form of their vessel, they can use a tool to carve designs into their artwork, just like the Native Americans.  

Every year about this time students and their families are given an opportunity to purchase items featuring their very own artwork, with proceeds going towards art room supplies including heavy duty construction paper, paint, clay, and other consumable supplies used by the students on a regular basis.  In the past, this opportunity has allowed me to purchase 15 iPad minis for the art classroom that are also used very often in art class.

Today is already the 13th day of school for the 2016-2017 school year, and my students are hard at work in art class learning about the elements of art, famous artists throughout history, and getting back into the Art Room routines. I am excited to share what we are doing! Be sure to check out the grade level links throughout the school year to see what is happening in the art room!  

Fourth grade has been having a blast in art working with a photo manipulation app.  Students first used the tools in the Brushes Redux app on the iPad to put an animal head on their body, the animal they drew for an earlier project.  This animal was inspired by the artwork created by Lousiana artist George Rodrigue.  To learn more about his art, click here.  

The fourth grade students took an afternoon field trip to visit two artists and their galleries from Bloomington, Illinois.  The first artist was Harold Gregor, who is a well known artist who creates many different types of landscapes.  He has even had his artwork hung in the White House! Harold Gregor is known for applying vivid colors to his art, and the fourth grade students studied his different types of landscapes while working on their own landscape art.  Many students used Harold Gregor's artwork as inspiration for their own landscape paintings.