Our beautiful Kindness Rock Garden was installed in November on Heathrow's campus! Inspired by the Kindness Rocks Project, anyone is free to contribute to our garden or be inspired to make their own at home or in a public place! Have a peek whenever you are walking through campus.
With so much gratitude towards the parents and community members that donated these large rocks & materials for this project, Heathrow 2nd graders will be leaving a lasting impression on our school campus! Each 2nd grader is painting a Kindness Rock, a hand-decorated rock that exhibits a message about kindness, peace, or gratitude. Upon completion, these Kindness Rocks will be on display on Heathrow's campus for others to see and brighten their days!
For more information about the Kindness Rock project, and for ideas to make your very own Kindness Rocks for your garden or to put out into the world, visit: http://thekindnessrocksproject.com/ Our fall EXSTREAM classes are underway and bursting with color! Each first grader is visiting the art room for EXSTREAM to learn about the order of the rainbow (ROY-G-BIV!) and to paint recycled materials that will become a large rainbow sculpture! Our sculpture will be an interactive installation at the Spring Art Show in April that students, parents, and visitors can write their "hopes" for "Someday over the Rainbow" and stick them inside the tubes of the sculpture. The students are so excited to see how this project grows!
Our giant self portrait studies in facial proportion and painting tints and shades are progressing so beautifully!
Wow!! For the past 6 weeks, all students at Heathrow have been studying self portraits, and they are a beautiful, expressive bunch!
Students in 3rd through 5th grade studied proper facial proportions for their facial features to look realistic; they are now moving on to studying the element of art Value to create tints and shades of their own skin tone to paint their self portraits! Kindergarten through 2nd grade students practiced "zooming in" and drawing big (a difficult task for tiny hands!) to create big faces. Their study of skin tone creation in watercolor paints also allowed them to learn about our Ballerina Brushes and how to treat them kindly as they dance across the page! From classic drawing study of facial features, proportion, and perspective, to color theory and value study, this unit has been extensive and so exciting as children yelp in awe of the color they mixed, and practice growth mindset in their growth of drawing skills. Their hands might not draw as they would like to completely yet, but we know that drawing is a skill just like reading, math, soccer, dancing, and more--practice makes progress! Here is a sneak peek of "selfies" in process! A quick project after a long 3 sessions of self portrait creation! We read and discussed the emotions presented in the book "It's Pumpkin Day, Mouse!." Students chose an emotion to express through their pumpkin drawing in oil pastel. Many students chose goofy, silly, or happy pumpkins, but there were some "spooky" and sad pumpkins out there. Students were encouraged to practice craftsmanship by filling in all white areas. Happy autumn!
The Florida Citrus Parade offers a drawing contest each year for students to complete an artwork of the parade, marching bands, college football themed floats, and citrus. Information and drawing sheets are available in the art room, but are also located below for printing at home! Every year, we have several students achieve Top 25 status, and we can't wait to see if we have a winner this year! :-) Good luck!
Another school year is here and Heathrow students are working together collaboratively and cooperatively in the art room to show their learning and make big ideas happen!
Students from 2nd through 5th grade worked to create a "quilt" composed of circles and quarters of a circle. Students studied how to divide circles with protractors to make halves and quarters, and designed symmetrical designs on their pieces before arranging them again within a square. Don't you love the diamond-shaped negative spaces that ties this collaborative piece together? Our students are sparkling already! Wild for Art! On April 12th, we had our very first Spring art show ever at Heathrow Elementary, where 400 students had artwork on display, with about 500+ projects total! We had collaborative murals, a glow in the dark stage with glowing, fluorescent artwork, and a variety of pieces ranging from clay, sculpture, drawings, paintings, collage, and more. The show was a dream of mine for students to have the opportunity to see and feel the cultural, refreshing experience of an art show. Many students expressed that they didn't know what an art show was. Afterwards, students told me how fun it was to see not only their piece, but their friends' and other students' works, visit with their peers at the show, and be inspired. The purpose of an art show is to allow the artist's ideas to be shared with others, experience art together, and discuss the impact of the pieces. I believe we succeeded in our practice of presenting our thematic artworks as a cohesive whole and reaching out to the community. The entire show's theme of the rainforest came full circle for many students as they experienced a variety of art projects by other grades all surrounding the theme. I watched students' awareness grow about environmental issues throughout the whole year. As an educator who believes in social and environmental justice, and teaching students to send a message in their artwork that is important, the art show was a display of the growth, understanding, and meaningful beauty that the children have created.
THANK YOU to every Dividend who volunteered on this project to make it the beautiful success it was. Thank you to Michael Nyman for the gorgeous photos of the show. Enjoy them! The Koru is a symbol of New Zealand culture representing growth and new life, significant of a baby palm frond. Our Heathrow artists looked at the pieces of Raewyn Harris, New Zealand artist, and created compositions using the Koru spiral shape.
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Art @ Heathrow
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