Elmer the Elephant

As you know, our calendar art this year featured Elmer the Elephant using water colours.  The journals, cards and calendars were distributed yesterday and looked fabulous.  Thank you for supporting the school fundraising and displaying school art at home.

You can read the stories we wrote about our very own Elmer on the Writing page (click on 'WRITING' above).  Here is one sample::

Written and illustrated by Daniel R

Butterfuly Art at the CBS Art Expo

The CBS Art Expo this year had a focus of textiles and materials.  Room 19 drew and painted Monarch butterflies on fabric using dye and wax.

Here is our display at the Art Expo

Fathers' Day Tie Shop

For Fathers' Day, everyone designed a tie to present to their Dad, Grandad, Uncle or brother - there was a great range of colours and patterns in our 'tie shop'.

Elmer the Elephant - calendar art

Room 19 have been learning how to paint using water colours.  First, we read stories about Elmer the Elephant and looked at the illustrations to see how he looked and moved.  Then we traced his outline and painted him in different colours.



Look on the Visual Arts page or on Room 19's classroom window to see all the different Elmers.
This is our Calendar Art for 2016.  You might like to order a calendar, diary or notelets that feature Elmer this year for yourself or your family.

Taniwha Narratives

We traced a taniwha shape, and then learnt how to use water colours to colour them.

We shared our taniwha narratives and read each others' stories,  and made comments about our buddies' writing.
Read our narratives on the Writing page.

Matariki kites and telescopes

When we read the book, Matariki, we found that people traditionally make kites at this time.  We made our own kites and decorated them in traditional Maori colours of red and black.  Once they were finished we had to wait patiently for the field to open so we could test our kites.  Eventually the rain stopped, the sun and wind dried the field . . . and we were off!  We had to run as fast as we could to make a slip stream for our kites to fly in.

The telescopes worked best when we looked up towards the light.

The whole class read the book, Matariki.  We compared the things we do at Matariki and New Year; some reading groups used Venn diagrams and some groups used Tcharts to make their comparisons.  We made the constellation of the Seven Sisters on black paper using a drawing pin when we made our telescopes.  Next we researched a suitable Maori design to decorate our telescopes online. When they were finally finished, we looked through our telescopes to see what we could see.

Art Week

In Art Week we made up stories about turtles, dolphins and stingrays and retold them in our shadow puppet theatre with plenty of action.

We made bubbly paint with dye and dishwash liquid, and printed it on paper.  We have used some of the bubbles to decorate our collage fish art work.

Zones of the Ocean

We have been learning about the zones in the ocean and the different sea creatures that are adapted to live there: the sunlight zone where seaweed was grow, the twilight zone which still gets some sunlight filtering down and the midnight zone where they is no light at all (the vast layers of seawater above blocks it out completely).

We watched videos, read library books and researched on the internet to investigate the different environments and sea life.  Then we made out own classroom display of the ocean.

We started with the midnight zone.  We shaded the blue paint with black to get a very deep shade of blue.

The twilight zone was next,.

We blended in plenty of white paint to make the correct shade of blue for the sunlight zone.

We added the continental shelf, seaweed and weeds, but most importantly, all the sea creatures we had researched and grouped by zone.

Valentine cards

We were learning about symbols and how they say a message without words - we looked at road signs and hand gestures, like stop or come here.  The heart shape means love all around the world in all kinds of languages.  

We made a Valentine card to give to someone special we love, and wrote a Valentine's poem inside.  As is the tradition, we did not write our names inside so no one will ever know who sent them.  Can you guess who is holding their cards?  Look on the VISUAL ART page for more mystery writers.