“Well Done” to our Grade 5 students who have been drawing Australian animals and using watercolour paints to make pictures inspired by Australian Author Illustrator Graeme Base. Jacob’s shark is lurking about in the ocean depths while Sarah’s Wombat is cheekily hiding in his underground burrow. Both students are in wonderful and creative 5AA.
Our Grade 5 and 6 students are looking at the writing and illustrations of Graeme Base. They were impressed by the fact that as a 10 year old Graeme’s love of drawing was encouraged by his Grade 5 teacher in Box Hill in suburban Melbourne. His teacher, Max, bought his dragon drawing for $15 which sent him on the path towards Art as a career. Graeme’s fantastic website has a Challenge for his latest book “The Golden Snail”. Our students have thoroughly enjoyed finding the 28 hidden snail and crossbones symbols and then holding the back of the book in front of the webcam in order to see the “magic”. In an act of Augmented Reality the snail appears in a cloud and sails about according to how the book is moved. We hope that you get the chance to try and enjoy it too.
My first classes arrive in our Visual Arts Room tomorrow so last week Mrs Vella and I spent some time reorganizing the work tables, Reading Corner, supply tables etc into a new arrangement.The Teacher Challenge had asked that we visit other Blogs and in doing so I discovered The Teaching Palette where I got some great Art Room tips which I put into action. Photographing the room I felt its bare appearance and likened it to a blank canvas.Tomorrow we start the 2011 year with some drawing related to Initial letters and Graeme Base’s illustrations. The Art Room has no soul without the students’ creative ideas and their colourful work displayed. Soon our Room will be a work of Art again. Whether it will be a masterpiece will be up to us all. Welcome back everyone.
