Many 8th graders have recently finished the Stations of the Cross project in Mr. Bell's Art Tech class.  Students used the Renaissance-based grid method to create free-hand pencil and ink drawings which they colored electronically on iPads. Illustrations by contemporary artist Shari Van Vranken served as model images for this student art.  

Kindergarteners are currently making paper maracas, which they will soon embellish with paper mache, faces, and cotton hair.  After rolling paper cylinders, and sealing corn kernels inside with paper end caps, students test their seals by doing the shake test.  If corn flies out, a hole needs to be patched with paper and tape.  During this project, students learn about cylinders by constructing them with paper and tape.  Kindergarteners engage in challenging spatial/structural problem solving as they draw, cut, trim, patch, and secure the lids of their maracas.  Click the video below to see the KB art class test their maracas.  Will the corn stay inside?      ​

Some 8th graders have finished the Stations of the Cross project in Mr. Bell's Art Tech class, and several students are nearing completion.  Students have drawn grids on small prints of illustrations by contemporary artist Shari Van Vranken.  Proportionate larger grids have been drawn on  card stock, upon which students scale up the small images by drawing the contents of each grid block with pencil and ink.  After erasing the grid lines and photographing the drawings, the images are colored electronically on iPads.

The photos below show six finished Stations of the Cross images.  A photo of Marshall Wingfield's drawing demonstrates the patience and sustained block-by-block focus necessary for doing high-quality work on the drawing stage of the project.  

Also below, 2ME art students appear at the end of a class during which they were finishing the construction and assembly of the basic cross shape of their paper, cardboard, and paper mache sculptures.  Students will soon build support bases and create colorful tassels for the upper ends of the crosses. Students will carry these works into the church during the 8th grade All Saints Program on November 6th.

​Each week, Mr. Bell makes a list of middle school students who want to work with robots in the art room on the Friday of that week from 3:15-4:45PM.   On Wednesday night, Mr. Bell emails parents of interested students.  If students enjoy designing, building, and coding, they may choose to attend regularly.

Many students enjoy these robotics sessions because of the camaraderie and engineering challenges.  Each Friday, there is an objective for the group.  The current goal is for returning 7th and 8th graders to teach sixth grade attendees how to successfully write code for a "line follower" challenge.  Portions of the EV3 Lego robots shown in this week's photos were constructed by attendees during the previous two Friday sessions.  

Our line follower challenge involves using color sensors to detect the intensity of light reflected from the table's surface.  The collected data is used to control right and left drive motor speeds.  As robots drive autonomously along the edge of a black line, they pick up objects with a lifter arm.  Each table has different distances between the target objects.  Thus, students at each table must learn to successfully determine the travel distances of each segment needed for their table's specific challenge.   (Driving distances are measured in rotational degrees of one of the drive motors.)

After learning to solve the line follower challenge during Friday robotics, the attending 6th graders will be able to serve as leaders when the 6th grade Art Tech classes face this challenge.  

We are fortunate to have the assistance of Mrs. Melissa Ju, assistant teacher of 1st grade and an SPCS mom, at our Friday robotics work sessions.

The photos below are from Friday, September 8. 

​Middle school students who regularly attended Friday afternoon robotics work sessions in the art room during the 2022-23 school year were invited to test and help de-bug a new robotics project that Mr. Bell plans use with middle school Art Tech Classes. The work sessions were 90 minutes each during 5 days in July.

Students studied code segment examples from a document created for this assignment. Each student designed a sequence of movements for his robot and wrote the appropriate segments with Spike 3 software on a Chromebook. Students used protractors and rulers to calculate the degrees headings, turning angles, and driving distances which they applied to their programming code. While all students had the same goal, they found various ways to achieve it.

The challenge was to: (1) drive from a base and shoot a ping-pong ball into a large hole in a board, (2) pull the box into which the ball falls back to base, and (3) remove an object sitting on the end of the wooden peninsula and carry it back to base.

Students used identical Spike Prime robot driving bases with catapults, which members of the group helped build during the recent school year for use in Art Tech classes. As a construction component of the project, participants built detachable arms for bringing the objects back to base. Holes near the rear of the robots allow for quick attachment and removal of attachments with "drop-in pins". When this assignment is used with whole classes, each group of 3 or 4 students will be able to store their attachments between classes. Additional challenges can be added easily to this project if groups within a class finish the early.

​Mr. and Mrs. Pandya and Saint Peter alumna Jasmine Pandya assisted Mr. Bell during the summer robotics service sessions.

​A variety of student art from various grades is featured this week.  

Second graders are shown with their paper weaving projects.  Students measured and cut half-sheets of cardstock to create a loom for weaving color patterns with 1/2-inch x 5 1/2-inch  strips of colored paper.  This project served to reinforce 2nd grade math content involving measurements.

The plant cell pillow by 6th grader Lana Schemerhorn is part of an interdisciplinary science-related project. Pillow sculptures by sixth graders Allison Blum, Ellie Grace Garner, Emily McMinn, Cooper Worthington, and 8th grader Brinn Skalak are personally creative expressions in the medium of sewing and cloth sculpture.  Works by Nyla Makanangot and Athena Workman are explorations into historical fashion design and human figure drawing.  The watercolor by 7th grader Sevvy Ludwig effectively creates the illusion of the deep space of a landscape.    

The Tinkercad model of Tryon Palace by 7th grader Sal Infinito demonstrates the successful manipulation of simple shapes to create a complex and accurate virtual model.  Tryon Palace was the first permanent capitol of the colony of North Carolina.  This 7th grade computer-aided design project was part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Art Tech and Social Studies classes.  Students used photos of their computer-aided design models to illustrate research papers in Mr. Thomas's class.

Eighth grader Arturo Saucedo-Trinidad created his Vanadium Atom video for an assignment that was a collaboration of the middle school Art Tech and Science classes.  For the Atom Video project, students creatively combined art, science, math, and engineering.  Students built virtual 3D Bohr models of atoms with the Tinkercad computer-aided design app.  Students used their atom models in videos, which provide information about elements the eighth graders are researching in science class.  

Seventh grade Art Tech students have recently been creating virtual 3D models of historically important architectural structures with Tinkercad computer-aided design (CAD) software.  This work is being done in collaboration with Mr. Thomas's Social Studies classes.  Photos of students' models are intended to be used as illustrations for US History research papers.  Students used only the basic tools of Tinkercad to create the complex forms in their models.

Third, fourth, and fifth graders are currently programming and running robots.  Middle school students who meet in the art room every Friday after school to work with robots built and tested the machines that the intermediate students are using.  

The intermediate students write code for programming Lego Spike Prime robots with Lego Education Spike 3 software on their Chromebooks.   They copy a general code framework that they must modify to make their group's robot run successfully.  They typically need to make decisions about turning angles, motor speeds, and travel distances. Code is downloaded to the robots by Bluetooth from Chromebooks. These robots have catapults that shoot ping-pong balls.
 
The goal is to program the robot to drive autonomously from one location to another and then shoot a ping-pong ball through a hole in a Styrofoam board. Students are offered safety glasses in case they wish to put their head in the goal when the robot is shooting the ball.  Once they can make a goal consistently, students begin to write code for the robot to return to base.  If successful with that, the next challenge will be to pick up an object after shooting the ball and return to base with the object.  Third, fourth, and fifth graders will be using the same robots during the next few weeks.  The coding challenge is adjusted to fit each grade level.  Students work in teams of 2-4 students.  They are instructed to take turns and help each other.

These videos show 5th graders of the 5-Green and 5-Blue Art Tech class in action with their robots.

Second grade art students have recently been drawing "Color Wheel Flower Gardens".  In this exercise, the dominant flower in the composition has petals that show a 6-part color wheel. The petals have the three traditional primary colors for painters (red, yellow, and blue) and the secondary colors (orange, green, and purple).  The secondary colors appear between the primaries used to make them.  Brown appears in the central circle of the color wheel flowers because various types of brown can be obtained by mixing the three primaries in different proportions.  Black is in the very center of the color wheel flowers because it can be obtained by mixing the 3 primaries in proportions of equal strength. Students used pencils, colored pencils, permanent markers, and their imaginations to develop these artworks.  

Kindergarten art students have made colorful popsicle stick boxes.  To make their boxes, kindergarteners glued and stacked alternating pairs of colored popsicle sticks. The floor of each box is a flat grouping of sticks that are glued to one end of the stack.  Also,  Mrs. Baker, the KB assistant teacher, enjoyed making her own box along with the students.  She appears in the KB class photo.