Djembe Drums

Last week students were introduced to Design an Ad, a contest through The Frederick News Post. The great thing about this contest is that each class is competing with only themselves, so someone from every group wins! The winning advertisements will be printed in a special publication in the FNP on May 8th. Students worked on their artwork during the latter half of the week and will continue their artwork throughout the month of March in between activities. On Monday, students were introduced to their next unit, the African Musical Performance. This is a fun one for the students because they are combining visual arts, dance, and music into one! Yesterday, the students created armatures for their miniature Djembe drums and today began to add papier-mâché. I was so pleased with how smoothly clean-up ran today because one of my two sinks were out of commission! Most students completed one layer of papier-mâché today, so we are on track to start painting mid-week next week.

A Full Week!

It was so great to finally have a five-day week last week! With five straight days of school, students accomplished quite a bit! At the beginning of the week, students added their finishing touches to their Elements of Art Compositions (pictures will be added to the virtual art show later this week). We devoted a lot of time discussing how to write a proper artist statement. Artists write about their artwork after each visual art project for a number of reasons: to reflect on the project, to explain their intentions behind creating their artwork, and most importantly, to reinforce their ELA skills! Students will have one more day to finish up their artist statements, and then it's on to our next unit!