Seanfhocail: Bíonn chuile dhuine lách go dtéann bó ina gharraí

EEW! MOO!

 

We used pho.to.com to turn an old photograph of a painting into an ‘oilpainting’, the photo editor befunky.com to add the graphics of the apples and the worm and also the graphic design website canva.com to create the cow from different shapes and a background with text. We enjoyed doing this.

In class we NEVER EVER translate Irish into English and perhaps the picture could help you guess what this proverbs means, but as we are doing this for our friends in New Zealand, we will tell you that it means ‘Everyone is good humoured until a cow gets into their orchard.’ Many Irish proverbs come from a time when raising animals and growing your own food was very important.

Recommended Website (4th-6th class): ‘Colours in Motion’

Life is a precious gift. Don't waste it being unhappy, dissatisfied, or anything else you can be
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: @Doug88888 via Compfight

If covering the topic of colour in class,

this website has great potential

for encouraging learning and discussion.

 

It is called Colours in Motion 

and was created by Maria Claudia Cortes

 

It is interactive and animated

and deals with the symbolism of colour.

There are also opportunities

to experiment with digital art.

We are learning about a famous artist: Picasso

Guitar in Orange
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via Compfight

We are learning about a famous artist.

His name is Picasso.

He broke the rules.

He experimented.

We like to experiment too.

We like his paintings.

They are unusual.

Click on this link and you can experiment

with creating pictures like Picasso’s.

And if you would like to read about

other artists we have studied,

take a look at these pages about

Georgia O’Keefe,

Van Gogh & Mondrian.

 

 

A Famous American artist – Georgia O’ Keeffe (1887-1986) and her flower paintings.

Georgia O’Keeffe

was a famous American artist,

who specialized in painting

large, colourful drawings of flowers up close.

Georgia O'Keeffe in my Camera
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Bob Marquart via Compfight

She was born in 1887

in Wisconsin in the USA.

A day in the life
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Tsega Dinka via Compfight

She lived on a farm, 

with nature all around.

 

As a child she didn’t like school,

but she loved art

and by the age of ten

she knew she wanted to be an artist.

 

She moved to Virginia

when she started secondary school.

Her drawings were greatly admired

by her friends and her teachers.

 

After leaving school,

Georgia went to art college in Chicago.

But she got seriously ill with typhoid.

When she recovered, over a year later,

she went to study art in New York.

 

In 1912, she returned to Virginia

to continue with her studies

Georgia became an art teacher.

She experimented with painting

in many different ways

before she developed her

own special way of painting.

 

In 1916, a photographer named Alfred Stieglitz

put some of her paintings in his gallery without telling her.

At first Georgia was upset, but she forgave him.

Alfred Stieglitz helped make Georgia’s paintings famous.

They got married.

 

They bought a house on a lake

They lived there during the summers.

It was here that Georgia began painting

the close-ups of flowers in bright, bold colors

that she is now most famous for.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: rocor via Compfight

This was new. We see lots of pictures like this now.

But at the time, only photographers had taken pictures like this.

No-one had ever painted such detailed close-ups of flowers before

 

In her later life Georgia moved to New Mexico.

She painted the desert,

the mountains,

and the adobe houses.

 

She especially loved to paint pictures

of desert landscape and animal skulls.

okeeffe notebooking  gallery
Photo Credit: Jimmie via Compfight

She continued to paint until she lost her eyesight.

She was ninety-eight years old when she died in 1986.

w9 - Georgia O'Keeffe
Photo Credit: Barbara via Compfight

We first learned about Georgia O’Keeffe’s

when we saw her famous painting, ‘The Lawrence Tree’.

We painted our own trees inspired by her’s HERE.

Art: Colour and Collage: Still Lives with Flowers

Art: Colour & Collage: Landscapes

Art Activity: Aliens in their habitat

Earlier in the year we turned our names into aliens.

Art Activity: Turning our names into aliens.

Now we have given them a habitat.

Green Schools: Gardening Club Posters

Inspired by the Chinese Willow Pattern

Soon it will be Chinese New Year

We listened  to the story of the

Chinese Willow Pattern.

 

 

Then we acted out the story.

To finish we made ‘statues’

of that dramatic point in the story

where Li Chi’s Father tells Chang he must leave

and Li Chi begs her father to let her marry Chang.

We would love to hear what you think of our art.

 

A Song for Chinese New Year from ‘Children’s Music’ by Nancy Stewart.

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

 

A Reminder:

Please don’t leave your child to explore online unattended

The internet is a portal to the world outside.

Children should be accompanied on this journey 😉

Seeing Pictures in Pictures: Emily Carr’s ‘Forest’

When 2nd Class, Room 6 were studying

the very beautiful painting ‘Forest’ by Emily Carr,

they were fascinated by pictures they could see in the picture.

 

The students of 2nd Class, Room 6 said

this was like finding pictures in the clouds in the sky.

Here are some of the images they could see in the original work.

 

A dragon

A Pirate

A Horse

What can you see in the picture?

‘I dream my painting and then paint my dream’. – Vincent Van Gogh

These are some of our pictures of trees.  

Before we did our project we often drew trees

that looked like lollipops 😉

 

We learnt about colour, shape and angle,

looking at masterpieces by a variety of artists.

These included Vincent Van Gogh

and Georgia O’Keeffe .

 

These are some of the trees we drew today

at the end of our project on the theme of trees.



‘I found I could say things with color and shapes

that I couldn’t say any other way

– things I had no words for’.

Georgia O’Keeffe

 

Thanks again to  Junior Art Gallery

whose link suggested this project to us.

 

We always appreciate feedback on our work 🙂

We would love you to comment!

‘Leaping Greenly Spirits of Trees’ – Art Project – Part 3

We spent the past few weeks looking at masterpieces of trees:

Van Gogh’s ‘The Mulberry Tree’

Mondrian’s ‘Gray Tree’

and Emily Carr’s  ‘Forest’

Georgia O’Keeffe’s ‘The Lawrence Tree’

and Klimt’s ‘Tree of Life’.

You can see more of this work on other posts 

You can see them here.

And also here.

Now having studied these works of art and trees ‘in real life’,

we will draw our own trees.

Before this project the most popular way

of drawing trees in the class was often like this:

However take a look at this slideshow

of the trees we drew since:

 

Perhaps after looking at our trees you might guess

which artist’s work we liked the best.

 

Was it Van Gogh’s colourful ‘Mulberry Tree?’

or Emily Carr’s ‘Forest’.

 

In fact as you can see from the graph below,

one artist’s work was a runaway success.

 

The children explained their choice by saying that

there seemed to be something ‘magical’

about Klimt’s ‘Tree of Life’

Spirits of Trees – An Art Project on the Theme of Trees

2nd Class Room 6 are continuing with

their art project on tree paintings.

Follow this link to see the first part of our project on trees.

 

We looked at some other famous pictures of trees.

We loved Georgia O’Keeffe’s  ‘The Lawrence Tree’

We loved the strong colour of the trunk,

the unusual angle of the painting

and the tiny stars in the sky.

 

We admired Emily Carr’s ‘Forest’

We were fascinated by

all the different colours of Emily Carr’s Forest.

We expected there might be green and brown.

But when we enlarged the painting on the whiteboard,

we could see blues, purples, yellows and lots of other colours.

Painting the sky and the grass is not like

painting a wall of our house or the kitchen door.

They are not all one colour blue or green.

 

Then we looked at Klimt’s wonderful ‘Tree of Life’.

We loved the bright colours, the branches

that curled round and round

and the little details among the branches.

 

To complete our project we are going to think about

colour, angle and shapes

and then draw our own trees.

 

“i thank You God for most this amazing day:

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;”

                         from a poem by ee cummings

Inspired by Van Gogh and Mondrian: ‘Trees’ by 2nd Class Room 6

When our friend at Junior Art Gallery posted this link on their blog…

encouraging us to do the interesting art, that is on this link in turn

2nd Class, Room 6 didn’t need to be asked twice.

We chose to begin with

Van Gogh’s ‘The Mulberry Tree’

and the very different ‘Gray Tree’ by Mondrian

and tried to create our own versions.

The Mulberry Tree is colourful

and not surprisingly The Gray Tree is very grey.

 

Over the next few weeks

we will take a look at the other trees on this link:

 

‘Lawrence Tree’ by Georgia O’Keeffe,

‘Forest’ by Emily Carr,

‘Pine Tree Screen’ by Hasegawa Tohaku

and ‘The Tree of Life’ by Gustav Klimt.

 

We are working towards then, drawing

our own trees experimenting with

colour, shape, and angle as these

artists have done.

‘Trees’ by 2nd Class Room 6 on PhotoPeach

Many thanks to Junior Art Gallery for pointing us in the direction of this great idea.

DLTK Kids Artwork Ideas (Arbor Day)

This is the link to the 2nd part of this project 🙂

Click on ‘Continue Reading’ below to comment.

Moments in the Sun – Being Successful – Taking Turns

We were talking in class about ‘moments in the sun’,

how every now and then some one has a day

where their talents are celebrated.

The children who took part in the Kilcoole Feis

had this ‘moment in the sun’.

 

Mark and Fiona had their most recent moment

when they got prizes in the art competition

organised by Junior Art Gallery.

 

More success will occur when the class enter

the Write A Book competition.

Winners and runners up will be picked from each class.

 

We will also enter the Junior Spiders Awards

and the Texaco Art competition

and who knows what might happen.

 

We talked about how we can’t expect

to climb to the top of the mountain

and be successful every day.

 

Being successful takes hard work.

Being successful also takes good luck.

If the weather was sunny every day

we would take it for granted.

The children in 2nd Class, Room 6

agreed that they all love snow days

but if it snowed everyday

they would eventually find this tedious.

Winning the Lotto would be

a dream come true

for many people,

but if it happened every day

we might say:

‘Oh No, not another

Lotto win’ 😉

 

We can take it in turns to be successful

and have our ‘moments in the sun’.

We can congratulate friends

who are successful

and enjoy their success

with them.

 

Today Nicole was successful.

Her lovely picture received praise

from Junior Art Gallery:

Nicole’s picture on Junior Art Gallery.com

Well done Nicole 🙂

This link will bring you to other successes 2nd Class Room 6 have had.

A Visualization based on ‘Winter Song’ by by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

Today we listened to a beautiful song:

 

‘Winter Song’ by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

This is what Matthew drew.

 

‘Winter Song’ was familiar to many of the students

because it is currently being used in an often repeated

advertisement on the television.

 

We studied the lyrics.

We used our imagination

and we sketched some pictures

that the lyrics put into our heads.

 

Then we took a look at a

wonderful animation on Vimeo

to inspire us even further.

‘Winter Song’ by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

 

Initially we used white chalk

on black sugar paper.

Then we added colour.

This is what we did:

 

These are the results:

Winter Pictures in Chalk on PhotoPeach

 

We would love to hear what you think of our artwork.

Do leave a comment.

We would love to hear from you.

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

A Word to the Wise:

Please don’t leave your child to explore Vimeo or Photopeach unattended  :)

The internet is a portal to the world outside. Children should be supervised.

Visualizing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’

We visualized what happens in the song

‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’

Here is a detail from Shauna’s visualization:

Here is JC’s very detailed visualization:

Double click on JC’s picture

to see the ‘twelve lords a-leaping.’

Junior Art Gallery Competition

Children from 2nd Class Room 6 entered this competition:

Junior Art Gallery’s ‘Favourite Christmas Food’ Art Competition

from Junior Art Gallery

We received a very nice email

and some entries were on Twitter.
Favourite Christmas Food – Some entries

Click on this link …

to see the thirteen entries from 2nd class Room 6

in Junior Art Gallery’s

‘Favourite Food Competition’

on display in ‘The Happy Pear’.

Patrons are invited to vote for their favourite.

I love them all 😉

 

UPDATE: Happy News for Fiona and Mark

who received their prizes today in school.

Thank you to Junior Art Gallery for this opportunity and your kindness.

Fiona’s and Mark’s pictures are on this link: Junior Art Gallery

Visualizing scenes from ‘The Hodgeheg’ by Dick King Smith

We are following the programme in comprehension:

‘Building Bridges of Understanding’.

We are learning comprehension strategies.

 

As a whole-school, we concentrated on ‘prediction’ in September and October.

Now we are practising ‘visualization’.

We are reading ‘The Hodgeheg’ by Dick King Smith.

We are also learning a lot about hedgehogs and road safety in class too.

Nicole drew this one:

We drew lots of pictures to illustrate The Hedgehog Family:

Ma, Pa, Peony, Petunia, Pansy and Max.

This is Owen’s one to show you the family…

‘… sitting in a flower-bed at their home,

the garden of Number 5A

of a row of semi-detached houses

in a suburban street.
This is Julia’s

Some other children also drew what they could visualize when we read:

‘On the other side of the road was a Park,

very popular with the local hedgehogs

on account of the good hunting it offered.

 

As well as worms and slugs and snails,

which they could find in their own gardens,

there were special attractions in the Park.

 

Mice lived under the Bandstand,

feasting on the crumbs

dropped from listeners’ sandwiches;

 

frogs dwelt in the Lily-Pond,

 

and in the Ornamental Gardens 

grass-snakes slithered through the shrubbery’.


JC included all these special features.

Here are our visualizations:

Visualizing ‘The Hodgeheg’ by Dick King Smith on PhotoPeach

Here is an Animoto of our work:

 

We would love to hear what you think of our work.

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

A Reminder:

Please don’t leave your child to explore online unattended
The internet is a portal to the world outside. Children should be supervised.

Art Activity: Turning our names into aliens!

See how we did this on this slideshow…
Name Aliens on PhotoPeach

See some on Animoto…

Please remember: As entertaining as the internet can be please do not let your child explore the internet unsupervised.

Visualizing ‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg

We are working on comprehension strategies

in reading, following the

‘Building Bridges of Understanding’ programme.

 

We spent the first six weeks of the school term

predicting what was going to happen next

in the stories we read.

Now we are adding ‘visualization’ to our skill set.

Teacher has read six short novels in class this year.

This one is our favourite by far.

 

“…Outside a light wind was blowing

the last of the storm clouds away.

In the east there was a glow,

and streaks of pink and violet

and duck-egg green tinged

the darker edge of the sky”.

 

From: ‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’

by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

 

Teacher thinks Nicole has visualized the sky at dawn, very well:

We all worked hard on ‘visualizing’ as you will see:

‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg 

As always I would remind you to supervise your child when they are online.

Jake visualizes ‘The Pirate Ship’.

 

Click here to see our book review and to hear our podcast.

AnswerGarden: Give some examples of ‘kind’ words.

We are doing a whole school poster competition.

We have to design a poster about good behaviour in school.

The theme is:

Respect:

Kind Hands

Kind Feet

and Kind Words.

 

As part of Anti Bullying Week

a.k.a ‘Be Kind and Be a Good Friend Week’,

we were talking in school about kind words.

 

These are the ones we thought of.

John Paul did very well.

He thought of five phrases

and John Paul’s first language is Spanish.

Well done John Paul!

 

We used ‘Answer Garden’ to record the words we thought of.

Give some examples of ‘kind’ words…. at AnswerGarden.ch.