Genius Hour is back

Genius Hour is back!

Genius Hour is a time for students to consider projects that they would like to work on. There are many creative and interesting projects, with many students challenging themselves in learning new skills. Some of the activities are: 

Sewing Dolls Clothes

Sewing a dress...

Creating designs...

Creating Pokemon Balls out of Clay

Stop Animation...

Diorama on Wolves...

Cooking Chicken Satay...

Students can explore skills and interests in Genius Hour that they may not be able to in conventional lessons. Differentiation of learning often gets spoken about when discussing how to meet each students needs. Genius Hour allows each student to learn at their own level. 

The process requires that each student reflect on their own learning and needs to be able to discuss what they have achieved. Students set goals for each week that they need to be able to achieve. We look forward to the Students sharing what they have learned in Week 8. 

What do you like the most about Genius Hour? What do you think you will learn from having completed Genius Hour? 

Artist Trading Cards

It has been stated before that, when we are able to share what we have learned it helps to develop and improve our understanding. The opportunity to share our artwork has arisen through an international project called "Artist Trading Card Swap".

The idea of  Artist Trading Cards was started in 1997 in Switzerland as a Project for Artists to share their work with one another. The card is about the same size as a regular Trading Card (63mm x 89mm). The artwork can be of any subject or medium. On the back, there needs to include details about the painting, the artist and where it comes from. 

An opportunity arose to participate in a school version through a group of Art teachers. Mini Matisse, otherwise known as Mrs Hahn, has given some of her time to organise this project.  More details of the project can be seen at her website: Mini Matisse.

To first create our cards I gave the students the following criteria that they had to make each of their cards for:

• One had to monochromatic
• As many different lines as possible
• use only primary colours
• Use a letter in the design.
• featured a cow
• own choice
• use perspective

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The next group of  cards that we created, needed to include a robot in one of the designs. We also used the following template so that all of our cards were labelled. 

Artist trading cards from Kate Todd

We are really looking forward to sending them to the United States soon, so that we can exchange our Trading Cards. It will be exciting to see where the cards all come from and the many different artworks that have been created. 

What have you learned through creating Artist Trading Cards? What have you enjoyed the most about the project so far? 

Milky Way

Milky way from Kate Todd

We have finished painting our cow! Doesn't she look beautiful? 

The experience of designing and painting Moo-juice has been profitable. It has helped to build community within our classroom and our school. We have developed an understanding of the design process from the initial design and then seeing through to the completion of painting her. 
The other benefits of having our Picasso cow is the focus that it has brought about the Dairy Industry and the importance it plays. Dairy Farming has a rich history in our local area. It provides many jobs and there are many health benefits for incorporating dairy into our diets. 
We have learnt that milk needs to be carefully transported so that it arrives uncontaminated at its destination. 
Stage 3 shared our completion with Kindergarten, who enjoyed coming and patting our cow. We look forward to seeing the other cows at the Presentation Day

Distorting images

Have you ever seen drawings that look so real that they appear to come out of the page? 

They are the result of using grids that distort them. Using what we know about perspective, we can create the illusion that objects are three dimensional. This is the basis of anamorphic art. 

We used a straight grid first to create a design. The lines were numbered to help transfer the design to the next distorted grid. 

The same design was then used for the curved grid. This proved to be more tricky but very effective when viewed in a reflective surface. 

The next step is to create drawings without grids. 

What do you know about anamorphic drawing? What have you found interesting about Art this term? 

Falling or Flying

Art is a great opportunity to explore many different ways to be creative but also to learn new skills. We are focusing on Optical illusions and how different two dimensional effects can create movement or look three dimensional.

On our Art page, there is a slideshow that explains Op Art, which was an art movement in the first part of the 20th Century. It explored the effects that line and colour had on people's vision.

The practical part of the lesson we created our own version of Op Art. This was inspired by looking at how different artists used line and shading to create a three dimensional effect. We discussed perspective, which is the illusion of using diagonal lines meeting at one point that give an illusion of depth and space.

We created a dot in the middle of a page, with lines radiating out from the middle. These formed the structure of the picture. Lines were added to created the illusion of waves. The resulting bands were coloured in using no more than four colours.

We looked at how to shade with coloured pencils focusing on creating layers of colour to give a smooth effect. To add to the effect, we took photos of each student to look like they were either falling or flying.

These were then cut out and placed onto the optical illusion. There were some great results. What do you think?

It's all Illusion!

Optical Illusions are a part of Art that are fascinating as well as entertaining. We will be studying how illusion plays a part of Art. There is a connection with Mathematics and Science, because of the way these images trick our eyes and alter our perception of the world around us.

We watched the following video, which introduced the topic. It shows how our mind makes up for what our eyes see. It is about what we perceive to be reality but is in fact an illusion.

Illusions (Part One) from Animal on Vimeo.

The next part of the lesson was to explore the many different types of illusions that are around, finding many different and creative optical illusions. 

We then watched another video by Brusspup on Youtube who created a little T-rex that when filmed looks like it is turning its head... so we then made our own,

What do you know about Optical illusions? Do you have a favourite optical illusion that you would like to share?

Art awards

Talent abounds in Stage 3, as we have some artistic students who won first Prize for our Recent Art show. The prizes were awarded for the People's choice, Photography, sculpture and for Year 5. A big congratulations goes to Grace, Nikita and Naomi. 

Don't Hate the Selfie!

The Inspiration for this project has come from the wonderful ideas of the iPad Art Room. They have some great resources for using Art and Technology together.

Stage 3 started the Project by defining what a "Selfie" was. The students discussed that it was a photo or snapshot that is taken of ourselves to show what we are doing, who we are with and where we are. These photos are then published to social media to show our friends and the wider community. It is often how we want others to perceive us. 

Our next point of discussion was to compare Selfies to a self portrait. Many artists used similar ideas when they were painting pictures of themselves, while also experimenting with colour and painting techniques. We created a chart to compare selfies and self portraits.

Don't Hate The Selfie! | Create infographics

The students then had to brainstorm, thinking of places where they would like to have a selfie, who they would like to have a selfie with and what they could include in their selfie. These ideas then formed the basis of the photos that they students took. They also came up with some creative solutions by using iPad apps such as Pic Collage  to recreate some of the ideas that they had.

The students will write a reflection on why they think their photo is effective and what it portrays about themselves. It will be interesting to see what they write!

Do you like taking Selfies? Why or Why not? 

MACC: The Creatives

Being creative is often a way of expressing our feelings, showing skills that we have developed and sharing with others our view of the world. MACC's art show. "The creatives" was an opportunity to showcase students creativity and to show their skills. There were many entries in all of the categories of Drawing/ Painting, Photography and Sculpture. 

There was a silent auction for each of the entries with the highest bidder winning the picture or sculpture. Each person was invited to vote on the artworks that they felt should win the prize. It was evident from the amount of families that attended that our Art show was a popular event. 

Did you enter something in the Art show? Which entry did you like the most? Why? 

Self Portraits with a difference

This week we looked at creating artworks that explored how we are made up,of more than one image. We wrote down all the things that we enjoyed, were interested in and what we thought our personality was. For each of these ideas, a symbol was created to represent that. They were quick sketches to get our thoughts and ideas going.

Then each person were given their photo. These were cut out and stuck on the page. A thought bubble was added & the symbols were drawn inside. Each one was very different! 

We have yet to complete our artworks, so please come back and visit us when they are finished! 

Hmm...Very Interesting!