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from the atelier 1/11/08

Welcome back!  I hope that everyone enjoyed their break and has a healthy and wonderful new year.  I also want to thank the whole MPI 'Ohana for all your love, gifts, and support this past year! 

Please mark your calendars for our elementary school self-portrait show at Kahala Mall, Feburary 17-24.  If you would like to help set it up or take it down, please email me at jguillory@midpac.edu.

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The children have had a wonderful first week back at school!


Our four-year-old class has a few different projects going on right now.  One of these projects stemmed from an interest in cutting paper.  A group of children would come in every day last semester and cut lots and lots of it.  As time went on, the paper piled up, and we asked the group what should be done with all of it. Should we use it for collage?  The group thought this was a good idea. As an added provocation, we told the group about a bunch of boxes that had been donated to the atelier that might be good to collage on. So began our Box Art Project. This project has continued for a month and a half.  About half of our children joined in then, and now many more have shown an interest.  We have noticed our children growing in artistic confidence and intentionality, carefully selecting materials and carefully placing them on and in their boxes.  This intentionality is really powerful to watch.  We see the children distinguish between things that they like and dislike, decide where to place objects, and determine what different materials mean to them as artists. 

We will be putting out a list of materials that we'd like parents to bring in to replenish our supplies and to include the children in a materials-selection process.  Some wonderful things to bring in as materials ("beautiful junk") are computer parts, keys, broken jewelry, etc.  We will be sending out a list soon.

Our three-year-old class is also working on several projects, such as painting, self-portraits, and observational drawings.  This week we took a walk to collect natural treasures to draw from. We also began working with clay again, which I will talk more about next time.

Kindergarten

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In Kindergarten we continue to work on our photography/drawing/painting project to celebrate our school's 100th birthday. This week we reviewed different techniques of painting. One technique, which the children have coined "dab painting," is derived from abstract expressionism and can be seen in the two pictures above, on the grass and on Crystal's fur.  Another thing that we discussed this week was painting colors that the children see in their photographs or using one's imagination for the colors that go onto their palettes.  Above, you can see that this student used colors from her imagination to paint in a rainbowed-colored Crystal.  Many of you know that Crystal passed away last semester, but many students chose to paint her for this project before she did.  This student's choice of colors preserved Crystal in her memory as being as joyful and as sweet-looking as a rainbow in the sky! 
 
Good work, Kinders, you all have been working so hard!

Posted on January 11, 2008 7:42 AM | Permalink

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