Learning Through The Arts (Part 1)

***I meant to post this last week. My apologies for the technical glitch. This post will give you an introduction to our work with Mr. Romaine and L.T.T.A.***

We are lucky to once again be taking part in Learning Through The Arts.  This is a program that pairs professional artists with classroom teachers.  We are working with Mr. Romaine who is a professional puppeteer.

Together, we are learning more about our community and community helpers, while learning to make puppets.  The students are enjoying each step of the process.  Yesterday, we began work on our community helper puppets.

It is a unique opportunity for the students, and myself to learn directly from an artist and gain deeper understanding from their expertise.

We will continue adding more detail to our puppets next week, and begin adding tools they might use on the job.  Stay tuned...

LTTA - Becoming Puppeteers...

Mr. Romain was back today for our latest session of Learning Through The Arts.  Our puppets are almost complete (a few details to be added this week), so the students wrote a small introduction for their community helper.  We played some games and sang some songs that helped us to get to know all the community helpers better.  Mr. Romaine even played the ukulele for us!

Next, it was time  to learn how to use the puppets to preform, and to share the information the students have learned about community helpers.  Mr. Romaine gave us some great tips.  The students learned to sit "shoulder to shoulder", so the puppets always face the audience.  They learned that the puppet who is "talking" is the puppet who is also "moving" - to help the audience better understand the presentation.  The students worked with a partner, and practiced the script they had written earlier.

When Mr. Romaine visits next week, the students will be putting on puppet shows with their partner.  Today, each team had a chance to try out the puppet stage Mr. Romaine brought for us to use.  The students enjoyed learning about puppet placement, movement and using their voices to share with an audience.

Mr. Romaine will be back next week for our last session together.  Before he arrives, the students will have a chance to finish their puppets, and practice the play they will perform for the class.  They are very excited!  Ask your child what community helper they chose for their puppet, and how that community helper helps those in the community.

Inspired Art...

In Visual Arts, we have been learning about the great Impressionist artist, Claude Monet.  We enjoyed reading books, Internet articles and viewing many of his beautiful paintings.

The students noticed that most of his art focused on aspects of nature, and we discovered that he most enjoyed painting outdoors.  Of all the Monet pieces we studied, the students enjoyed the water lily and garden paintings the best.

We took our turn at drawing a water lily pond landscape.  The students started by creating quick sketches of what they wanted to paint.  Their focus was on the different types of lines they were using, spacing the water lilies to show depth (some close up, some far away) and also, their use of colour.

The next step was to draw both the water lilies and the lily pads in crayon.

Next, it was time to paint.  The students enjoyed this experience and it was great to hear the conversations and connections being made.

Beautiful masterpieces inspired by a master artist!