Lincoln Line Design Landscapes

Wouldn't it be fun to live out in the country? What if you could paint your fields? How about drawing patterns on them? First grade students created their landscapes with pencil. We talked about adding trees, a barn, silo, clouds and a sun.

Then the designs emerged.
Using two different sheets of paper with inspirational design patterns, students filled in their field sections with a variety of designs. 

When everything was drawn or traced with permanent marker, then the designs were colored with crayons. We wanted to use crayons because we knew they would resist the next medium added: water color glitter paint!

This was very challenging for first grade, but you can see that they were very creative and their finished products are gorgeous!

Snowshoe Hares

Arctic hares are incredibly stealthy and clever.  They are known for their ability to camouflage during the winter months by shedding their blue-gray fur and growing white fur to hide in the snow.

They eat berries, bark, grasses, and moss that can be found in the area surrounding the Arctic tundra.

They generally live in groups ranging from 20-300 hares and travel in packs.  This offers protection to the group.  Generally, the arctic hare searches for food within a one-mile radius of where it lives.

Kindergarten students made arctic hares by exercising specific fine motor skills including tracing, cutting, coloring, and drawing.  They learned how to draw 6 pointed snowflakes and embellish them with repeating patterns.  

2015 Ravinia District Office Display

Every year, the Board Room at the district office is festively adorned with beautiful art made by our home grown students.  

We love the opportunity to share their original art with administrators and the community.  

This year, Ravinia a select group of students displayed their art during the month of January.  

Weave Silk

Remember Spirograph?  Enjoy playing with symmetrical designs?  Check out Weave Silk to experience something amazing!

Yarn Basket

This year the fifth grade once again embarked on the challenge of creating a three-dimensional project using weaving techniques.  This project was challenging to those students who had never used a needle and yarn to create art.  Their results were amazing!

Students were encouraged to use unusual color combinations and problem solve as shape issues arose in the construction of their basket.  Some students enjoyed the project so much they came back to me for supplies to make more baskets!

It is rewarding to watch students embrace a new art concept with such energy and excitement.

Students enjoyed the basket project and overcame challenges by applying their problem solving skills.  To me, this is what makes a project a success.  They are currently displayed in the hallway leading to the treehouse.

Huichol Yarn Pillows

The Huichol (pronounced Wee-chol) people inhabit the most remote parts of north central Mexico.

These once nomadic descendants of the Aztecs are now an agrarian society farming in a difficult mountainous homeland.

Originally intended as ceremonial offerings to the Spirits to insure a bountiful harvest, yarn paintings continue today as a testament to thewhole of their religious and cultural beliefs. Filled with the iconography of their organizing mythology, these compositions are teeming with color and life. In simplest terms, these works document their life and relationships to the life forces of the spiritual world.

(http://www.dickblick.com/multicultural/huichol/)

Fourth grade students applied their newly acquired knowledge of Huichol art to create a personalized yarn painting.  They exercised their ability to sew on burlap and turned their two-dimensional sewing into a three-dimensional pillow!

Students were challenged to fill at least half of the area of their burlap with yarn-not an easy task.  These fourth graders stepped up to the plate and succeeded with flying colors!  Their beautiful pillows are currently on display in the treehouse.

Over the river and through the woods....

Third grade students studied the music set to Lydia Maria Child’s popular Thanksgiving poem, Over The River And Through The Wood.  The poem was divided into one sentence phrases and randomly distributed among the students.  Using their special line from the poem as inspiration, students created a drawing to reflect the poem’s phrase.  

Printmaking concepts and techniques such as positive and negative space, image transfer, reverse imaging, and inking/printing were applied to create their finished product. Their beautiful prints were enhanced with colored pencil to define special areas. Their poem print is currently displayed in the main hallway.

Lots of Socks!

BRRRRR!  There's nothing better than a warm pair of socks on a chilly winter day and what could be better than crazy socks?  Second grade students put on their creative thinking caps and designed some one-of-a-kind booties using line design as their inspiration.  

We examined some crazy socks to get the creative juices flowing and drew our socks free-hand with some guidance.  Once the sock was drawn, a heel, toe, and stretchy ribbed top was added.  Then the craziness began!  First, students drew in unusual lines to define different sections.  

Second, students filled in the various sections with a different line designs.  Lastly, glitter watercolor paints were applied to the different sections to bring out the "real" crazy in those crazy socks!   They are currently on display outside the second grade classrooms.

Carnival of the Animals

Camille Saint-Saëns, 1835 – 1921

When Camille Saint-Saëns was just a toddler, his mother and his great-aunt began teaching him music. He was only five years old when he gave his first public piano performance. When he was seven, he began to study with other teachers, and he had already begun composing his own music. He became one of the most famous French composers.

First Grade students were immersed into the world of Camille Saint-Saën’s Carnival of the Animals.  
We read poetry set to the music of Saint-Saën’s compositions and used our bodies to explore sounds through animal gestures and movement.  We carried this lesson into art where students learned and applied basic animal drawing techniques.  Using these skills, the first grade students created a train car containing their favorite animal.  The train is currently traveling down the main hallway as it makes it way to the Carnival!

One of Saint-Saëns’ most well known compositions, The Carnival of the Animals, is enjoyed by children all over the world for the pictures it paints of animals. (www.dsokids.com)

A Winter Forest

Kindergarten students were challenged with drawing and cutting zig-zag lines to form pine trees.  They selected different color papers they felt would balance well against one another.  They followed a series of directions that required sharp listening and drawing skills to draw and cut their zig-zag lines.

 Once all the trees were drawn, students carefully cut them out.  They tore paper to represent trunks and used white chalk to draw a snowy hill with gradated pressure and application.  The taller trees were glued onto the backgrounds and smaller trees were stuck onto their trunks using 3D-O's which allow the trees to raise off the background giving the finished overlapping shapes a sense of depth.  

Finally, dots of glue were applied and "snow" was carefully sprinkled onto their pictures.  You will find our wintery forests in the main hallways at Lincoln and Ravinia School and in our Treehouse (of course)!

Mosaic Corn

Mosaic Corn

A mosaic is art created by placing small shapes alongside one another to fill a space with color.  The earliest mosaics date back to decorative work in Greek and Roman religious structures.

Kindergarten students examined a Byzantine mosaic of a duck to familiarize themselves with the concept of a mosaic.  We examined some seasonal harvest corn and the children made connections between the colored construction squares of our project and the colored kernels of the corn.

Students were instructed to place their squares close together without allowing them to touch which tested their gluing and placement skills and served as a fine motor exercise.