Sixth grade Art Tech students have recently been creating plant and animal CELL PILLOWS by sewing with needles and thread. The pillow designs are based on students' drawings of reference illustrations. The organelles of the cell pillows were affixed to the surface of the cloth with fabric glue. Students stuffed their pillows with poly-fill. In this display, all of the pillows represent plant cells.
Eighth graders have just finished their work on a collaborative effort of the middle school Art Tech and Science classes. For the ATOM VIDEO project, students creatively combined art, science, math, and engineering. Students constructed virtual 3D Bohr models of atoms with the Tinkercad computer-aided design app. Students used their atom models in videos, which inform viewers about elements the eighth graders are researching in science class.
Sixth grade Art Tech students have recently been creating plant and animal CELL PILLOWS by sewing with needles and thread. The pillow designs are based on students' drawings of reference illustrations. The organelles of the cell pillows were affixed to the surface of the cloth with fabric glue. Students stuffed their pillows with poly-fill. In this display, all of the pillows represent plant cells.
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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. Third grade art students recently created virtual models of dogs, as well as doghouses and pens, with Sketch Up for Schools computer-aided design (CAD) software on Chromebooks. By using this geometry-based digital tool, students learned that lines can be used to form planes and that planes can become components of complex structures. Eighth grade art tech students have been constructing virtual 3D Bohr models of atoms with the Tinkercad computer-aided design app. These atom models, which students have used in videos, are of elements they are researching in science class. This joint effort of the middle school Art Tech and Science classes allows students to creatively combine the disciplines of art, science, math, and engineering.
This video is a look at the Stations of the Cross at our school during Holy Week. Fr. Jim Magee led our students and faculty in the Stations, with special artwork created by 8th grade students. 8th graders drew the Stations of the Cross in art tech class. Students drew grids with 1/2-inch squares on small prints of illustrations by contemporary artist Shari Van Vranken. They made proportionate grids with 1-inch squares on their drawing papers in order to scale up the images they are observing. Math concepts are reinforced as students must remain focused on corresponding positions on 2 graphs as they draw the contents of each grid block. When finished with their drawings, students developed their images further with Sketchbook graphic design software on their iPads. Click here to see the Stations of the Cross artwork. This week's student art features two interdisciplinary STEAM projects which reinforce science class concepts.
Sixth grade art Art Tech students have recently been creating plant and animal cell pillows by using the running stitch and the whip stitch to sew their creations. The pillow designs are based on students' drawings of reference illustrations. The organelles of the cell pillows were affixed to the surface of the cloth with fabric glue. Students stuffed their pillows with poly-fill. The atom video project is a collaborative effort of the middle school Art Tech and Science classes. With the Tinkercad computer-aided design app, students built virtual 3D Bohr models of atoms of elements they are researching in science class. They created introductory pages in Google Slides. The videos were created in iMovie. All of this work was done on students' iPads. This week's student art is from the 1st grade symmetrical butterfly project, the 7th grade mini-golf design project, and the 8th grade Stations of the Cross project. The grid method was employed by 8th graders to make free-hand pencil and ink drawings of illustrations by contemporary artist Shari Van Vranken. Students photographed their drawings and colored their photos in the Sketchbook app on their iPads. For the mini-golf project, 7th graders used only the the basic shape tools of Tinkercad computer-aided design software to create the complex forms in their virtual 3D models. This interdisciplinary assignment involves creative engineering and math calculations. It was developed and is taught by Mr. Bell and Mrs. Cvetan. In art class, first graders have learned about symmetry by drawing half of a butterfly on a folded piece of paper, cutting it out, and then unfolding the paper. Crayons were used to color the butterflies. Flowers and other landscape components were made with cut colored paper. Students used glue sticks to affix the butterflies and the other objects to a background paper. Fourth grade art students have recently been working with Sketch Up for Schools Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software on their Chromebooks to create sailboats in an environment. Many of the fourth graders' finished works are shown in this presentation. Several of the fourth graders will continue working on their boat scenes next week.
Sketch Up for Schools is a free cloud-based software that students access through their school Google accounts. Sketch Up Pro is widely used by architects and structural designers. The student and professional versions of Sketch Up are very similar. As Sketch Up for Schools is geometry-based, students are provided with an educational opportunity in math, as well as a stepping stone toward various professions which employ engineering and architectural 3D modeling software. Our students make all of their forms with the tools of the program, and are never allowed to use downloaded or pre-constructed forms in their Sketch Up work. The tools the fourth graders have been using include line, rectangle, push-pull, select, flip, offset, rotate, move, scale, and bucket fill (for colors). One of the photos below shows the steps that Muna Akubue of 4P used to create her boats. This week's student art is from the 7th grade mini-golf lane design project. The basic shape tools of Tinkercad computer-aided design software were used to make the complex forms in these virtual 3D models. This math-art assignment, which involves creative engineering and math calculations, was developed and is taught by Mr. Bell and Mrs. Cvetan.
The beautifully creative and innovative images produced by students for this project have been made entirely with Tinkercad software, except for the work of Austin Ju. He created a laptop computer model with the basic shape and text tools of Tinkercad. However, the images on his virtual computer's monitor are screenshots of his Tinkercad work for the mini-golf project, which he made on his iPad. He arranged photos of his mini-golf lane on a photo of his laptop model in the Sketchbook app on his iPad. In the world of Austin's image, the mini-golf design was created by the laptop computer. The laptop computer was created by Austin on his iPad. If we consider this image in the context of recent advances in computer technologies and artificial intelligence, we might ask ourselves who created the mini-golf design in Austin's picture. Was it made by Austin or by the virtual model of the laptop computer? This week's student art features watercolor paintings by 2nd graders. Students drew, cut, and assembled relatively simple paper shapes to make the more complex structures of the birds. The watercolor shapes and crayon line patterns in the sky echo the shapes of the birds, thus helping to create compositional unity in the paintings.
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Mr. John Bell, Art TeacherMr. Bell focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and presented STREAM (Science, Religion, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) workshops at the Diocesan Teacher Conference, as well as multiple workshops throughout his years in the Diocese. Archives
May 2024
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