A wild week before Christmas!

My PE classes learned a new game, Star Wars!  They loved it!

On Tuesday morning, Sven the Kindness Elf visited the studio!  Students decided to make a poster for Ms. Durand thanking her for teaching them music.

On Wednesday, RAOK Club bagged over 1,000 new and gently used stuffed animals for police officers to give to children in need.  Bags included notes of kindness from our students.

Officer Stanley from Winnebago County joined in stuffing bags with the children.

On Friday, these girls gave up their recess time to make a blanket for Mrs. Bardell's husband!  

We also are experimenting with a new "Smelling Studio."  Students may gently rub one herb leaf per class period and enjoy the smell to themselves.  The children are really into it!

Winter Celebration!

Wow!  Today was fun!  We rotated grade levels and specialists had relay races in the gym!

Let's decorate the tree!

Human lights chain!

Let's waddle like penguins!

The smiles were amazing today!  

Busy days finishing our first WOW pieces of the school year!

The following pictures were all taken during one class period.  So many busy artists in action today.  WOW piece 1 is due next Friday, December 18th.

Here you see students reflecting on each other's artworks and collaborating on their artist statements to check for understanding.

We have circle weaving!

Monsters and tessellation spiders!

And this little painter, who made beautiful paintings for many of his classmates today!  Fantastic brush strokes!  Art is fabulous when we can have choice in mediums.

Masks, monsters and class taught by Bing Bong from Inside Out

What a fantastically fun full-moon, pre-Halloween week at PES!  Fourth graders in Miss Klewin's class started the week with creating masks out of plaster to go along with our Mexican art unit.  Don't forget to bring goodies to decorate your mask this week!  

This week was also Red Ribbon Week!

We had twin day...

Superhero day!

Students in Miss Hoffman's third grade grade class are participating in a special collaborative project with the high school students in Miss Torre's classes.  They are designing and writing about their own, original monsters.  The high school students will then build the monsters out of clay and the artists will meet in the spring.  This is my third year with this project and it's a huge hit!

Second grade students watched a short video about contemporary sculptor James DeRosso, who specializes in clay monsters.  They used oil pastels on black paper to create our own monsters!

Students have been embracing choice art as well!  We currently have three studios open that include drawing, inspiration (books) and now collage!

To round off the week and in the spirit of Halloween, Bing Bong taught classes and participated in the parade on Friday!

Enjoy your weekend!

Blacksmithing Shop Demonstration

Did you know Pecatonica High School is one of only 5 high schools in the United States (and the ONLY one in the Midwest) that offers artistic black smithing to our students?  Thanks to Mr. D for showing our 4th grade students this amazing sculpture art form!  (Miss Klewin's class will go in a couple weeks.)

Have you seen our Kindness Wreaths around school?

For the third year, I have incorporated my favorite positive behavior management system into the Dragonfly Studio.  We call it "Our Kindness Wreath."

Our 2015-16 beginning wreath.

When students are caught doing acts of kindness for each other or the well being of studio, they might be invited to add a ribbon to the wreath.  The ribbons are kept in a box behind the purple hand chair.

Our first wreath from 2013-14 resides in Mrs. Brockway's office.  

See if you can find our wreath from last year!  Hint, keep your eyes to the sky!

Peace Day & Unity Day Fun!

We started out the week by celebrating the International Day of Peace by planting pinwheels for "whirled" peace on the front lawn of the school!

Today we had "the best day ever" by celebrating Unity Day!  A huge shout out to Miss Hoffman for making Unity Day an amazing success!