​The videos titled "5 Green origami birds" and "5 Blue origami birds" show our fifth graders flapping the wings of their origami creations and practicing their bird calls.  It started to rain at the moment we began shooting the 5 Blue video.  The students and their birds bravely continued flapping and tweeting.  However, after the bird bath, the origami projects were a bit soggy.

Kindergarten art students have recently made paper flower collage drawings and paper hats.  The paper flowers were made by folding and cutting colored paper squares, and then gluing a small piece of paper behind a hole in the center of each flower.  Students glued their flowers to a sheet of paper and drew a springtime landscape.  

To make their funny paper hats, kindergarteners were provided with 2-inch wide strips of cardstock which they taped together according to instructions.  Students relied on their classmates to help them fit the headbands to their heads, which is the first step in the project.  Perpendicular arcs of paper completed the base form and provided a structure upon which cones (spikes), cylinders (cannons), and curled paper strips (curly-whirlies) could be taped.  Students employed structural reasoning to design and assemble the geometric forms that comprised their hats.  Also,  Mrs. Baker, the KB assistant teacher, enjoyed making her own paper hat along with the students.  She appears in the KB class photo.  

The 6W art class is shown below in the video, 6W Robot Exam 2022, running robots that they built and programmed. Working in groups of 3 or 4, students built their EV3 Lego robots according to specifications. They programmed their robots with the EV3 Classroom iPad app to use color sensors to drive along the edges of black lines. Each team had to develop unique code to accomplish the goal, because each team's track design was different.  The challenge was to program the robots to follow a line to each of 3 target objects, pick up each object, throw it into a "catcher box" with a forked lifter arm, and return to the base area. As you can see in the video, all eight teams achieved success. Excellent work, 6W!

​This week's student art features portrait head drawings and still life painting by eighth graders, sixth and seventh grade pillow sculptures, and seventh grade Tinkercad and colored pencil drawings.  To create their head drawings, students gridded photos with the Sketchbook app on their iPads. They made corresponding grids on sheets of card stock.  Students observed the visual information in each block of their photos and recorded their observations in the corresponding squares on their paper grids.

​Fifth grade art students have been creating virtual 3D models with Sketch Up for Schools computer-aided design (CAD) software on their Chromebooks.  These photos show students' airplane design projects.  As with all of the CAD projects that we do at Saint Peter, students built their complex structures by creating, manipulating, and combining basic shapes.  The photo of Lucas Mora's jet construction steps shows how he executed sections of his aircraft, which he combined to complete his jet.   Although students were taught the same general construction method, each student's jet was visibly different.  Steps included the wing set, the fuselage, and the landing gear.   After creating and coloring the jets, students were able to duplicate and rotate their aircraft, and create other structures for their compositions. 

This work helps our students develop structural reasoning capabilities.  It also affords students the opportunity to work creatively in a medium that is similar to what architects and engineers use for planning structures that will be built.