AfterDecember at Orchard school is filled with buzz about the winter play, the holidays (who doesn’t love gift giving?) and plans for winter break. It’s incredible how much we accomplish in just 3 weeks!
When students have a performance to prepare for (play or circus), art classes are moved to the Tile room to give Rock full range of the barn space for rehearsals. Also, students get pulled from classes to rehearse specific scenes the whole week before, so if your child comes home with unfinished art work then it probably means they were refining their performance skills instead. On the days we are in the Tile room, I intentionally choose rich projects that use a modest amount of supplies. We were back to Value. With another shot to practice adding value to a subject, we played with charcoal to create beautiful polar bears. By following verbal prompts and visuals the kids drew their impressions of polar bears. They then carefully traced their pencil lines with charcoal. The final touch was to use a finger to rub their charcoal lines to organically create grey shades for depth and value. Some added their personal flair after, like, Santa hats, sunglasses and the northern lights. Every single polar bear came out unique and spectacular.
The second week of December was play week!! Crunch time! Again, we found ourselves in the Tile room. With more student pull outs expected, I offered two art projects to complete. A watercolor resist of snowflakes made with oil pastels and a step by step on how to draw a super cute penguin with an oversized scarf flowing on a winters breeze. Some kids were lucky to create both! These amazing kids worked really hard at putting the play together and all the art work showed. Bravo kids, you all crushed it!
After play week we were back the art room! In celebration we created blizzards in a forest of evergreen with splatter paint!!! The students started with black paper for a winter night and used torn off brown paper for a dormant ground, drew and cut out triangles out of cool colored, painted paper, arranged and glued the triangles to create their forests. Using oil pastels they added personal details before heading to the splatter paint station! With old toothbrushes and white paint the kids gleefully flicked the bristles covered in paint to splatter away to create the snowstorm of their dreams! These turned out magical. Happy winter break, friends! See you in the new, blessed year.

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