Another Exciting Art Residency Coming to the Art Room

During this year’s Artist in Residency, every student at Banks Road will get to experience working with a professional artist during art class.  January 21^st through 28^th  we will be hosting the environmental artist Bryant Holsenbeck. The students will participate in her “Weaving Like a Bird” residency where they will use recycled materials, string, yarn, old sheets etc to weave a wall sculpture that will be installed in the school.

We need everyone’s help collecting fabric for us to use in our artwork! Please send in scrap fabric, old sheets or curtains, ribbons, and yarn! The more colorful, the better! If you would like to contribute but don’t have these things lying around, gift cards to fabric stores like Joanne’s Fabric would be very helpful and much appreciated as well.  Also, keep a look out for information on ways to volunteer to help with this residency.

I will collect all contributions. Please send contributions to Attn: Ms. Stephenson whether you send it through your student or bring it in to the office. Thank you for your support of Banks Road Visual Arts!

For more information about Bryant Holsenbeck’s Residencies check out her web page at:

http://www.bryantholsenbeck.com/weave.html

Contact me with any questions- mstephenson@wcpss.net

 

Another year!!

Its another new year for the Banks Road Art Room, and we have some exciting new additions and changes.

Banks Road is going full force into implementing our new Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS). The art room is embracing this with the use of Compass Coins and Blazer Bucks. Classes earn Compass Coins at the end of class when they work as a team to meet our classroom expectations. Individual students are earning Blazer Bucks for their personal contributions to being Responsible, Respectful and Safe in the art room. The students can then use the Blazer Bucks that they earn in the classroom and anywhere around the school to purchase art from our NEW Art Store!

I've also added a daily warm-up to our class procedures. Each day, the students enter the classroom, find their seats, and immediately get started by looking at the "Warm-Up" section of the board. The warm-up will always consist of a picture of a piece of artwork, some information about that artwork and something for the students to do in relation to the artwork. Some days they may talk with their table or a partner, other days they may write or draw in response to a question or prompt pertaining to the work. This will help prepare our minds and eyes for looking at artwork, thinking about it, connecting it to other subjects, cultures, times, etc. and sharing our ideas with others.

I am looking forward to this year and seeing how our new additions will make the art room experience even more fun!

Art Room Expectations:

Respectful:

-Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

-Listen when others are talking

-Listen during instructions

-Speak constructively about other artists’ work

-Treat art supplies and tools with care

Responsible:

-Find your seat quickly

-Follow directions

-Put things back where they belong

-Clean up your work area

-Keep your table basket tidy

-Help keep our art studio/classroom organized and clean

Safe:

-Walk

- Clean up spills

-Use tools appropriately

-Follow sink safety rules

-Keep hands and feet to yourself

-Sit properly on your stool

Follow Banksart on Instagram

I am so excited to blog about and introduce the new Banks Road art classroom instagram that I have recently set up:

                       Banksart

Instagram is a free app for iphones, and ipads that is so much fun. Its a great way to practice your photography skills, as well as, try out some simple photo editing such as cropping your photo, or changing the contrast or filters on your photos.  I love to take pictures of things that I find interesting, whether they be activities, objects, or even just a super close-up of a texture or color, and then changing how my picture looks by upping the contrast or giving it a filter that makes it appear old or maybe one that brightens the colors, etc.

I have set up a classroom instagram that you can follow to see what is going on in the Banks Road Art Room. I will post pictures of students' finished work, work in-progress, art displays and interesting, art-related things going on in the Banks Road world.

To follow the Banks Road Art Room on instagram, you will need an instagram account yourself. Use your app store on your iphone or ipad to search for and install instagram on your device. Kids, that means get permission from your parents to use their account or have them help you set one up for yourself.

Remember that you must be responsible, respectful, and safe when using online apps.

Here's How:

-Be RESPONSIBLE- You are in charge of the actions that you take and decisions you make, so make sure you are taking and posting pictures that are appropriate. Remember other people can see these pictures, if you allow it, and they can report inappropriate photos. 
-Be RESPECTFUL- You can comment on other people's photos and on the photos that I post. Make sure your comments are respectful. When you type a comment, before you hit that "send" button, ask yourself "Is my comment respectful? Would I want someone to say this about my artwork? Does my comment use appropriate, positive language?". Make sure you can answer "yes" to all of those questions before you post your comment. Usually, if we follow the golden rule "Do to others as you would have them do to you." it'll keep us out of any trouble.
-Be SAFE- Use privacy settings to make sure that only the people you want to follow you on instagram can see the photos that you post. And make sure that you never include personal information such as addresses or phone numbers in your comments, photos or photo blurbs.

Once you have an instagram account, just search for Banksart and click the follow button to begin checking out the photos that we will post. I am looking forward to trying this out for the art room. I, once again, encourage all students and parents that decide to follow us to make sure that any comments are respectful and appropriate for all eyes.

Kindergarten Snowmen

So far in 2013, we’ve had a couple of delays and a couple of early releases due to some wintery weather but no real big snow. That hasn’t kept our Kindergarteners from building snowmen in the art room though.

We read the book All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle and figured out that we first need a big snow that covers the ground with LOTS of snowflakes. We made snow on our paper with white tempera paint and created a snowy texture on the ground by dabbing and pouncing our brushes. Second, we needed to “build” 3 snowballs; big, medium, and small or big, smaller, smallest.

When our snow and snowman was painted we had to think of all the details we needed to give our snowmen and snowwomen some personality. We learned how to cut multiples of the same shape by folding our paper and cutting all the layers at the same time to create our eyes, buttons and arms. We continued to practice our cutting, snipping and gluing skills by using paper from the scrap bin to create hats, scarves, and other accessories for our snowpeople.

The kids did a wonderful job creating unique, fun snowmen with plenty of detail and personality.