Georgia O'Keeffe

5th grade learned about Georgia O'Keeffe and looked at some of her famous paintings. We talked about "zooming in" and how she liked to do close up paintings of things in nature. 

The students then looked up flowers on the computer and chose one to zoom in on. They drew their close ups on black paper with pastels and colored them in using pastels. 

Here are some examples. They did an amazing job!!!

Monet's Water Lilies in the Dark

6th grade learned about the artist, Monet, and made our own version of his Japanese Bridge over Water Lilies. We did "Water Lilies in the Dark" using pastels on black paper. 

2015 Rain Barrel!!!

4th grade designed and painted this year's entry into the Barnegat Bay Blitz Rain Barrel Challenge!! Look for more info about voting soon! It got picked up yesterday to be sealed and photographed for the website!! 

Primer!

Students working on our Minecraft themed barrel!

The class researched animals that live in the NJ Watershed and made a tile for their animal. 

Almost finished!!

Great job, 4th graders!!! I am proud of how hard and how well you worked to finish this!! 

Dr. Seuss Week!

Dr. Seuss Day is one of my favorite days in school. I am making it Dr. Seuss Week with many activities in every class. 

Preschoolers, Kindergarten and 1st grade followed directions and used patterns to create their own "Cat in the Hat" this week!

Binary Bracelets!

Because we are locked out of the computers during the weeks that the PARCC is administered, we are doing "Unplugged Activities" from http://www.CODE.ORG . In 5th and kindergarten, we learned about binary code and made binary bracelets using beads that stand for the first letter of our first names. 

This is a picture of the 5th graders and their binary bracelets. 

I truly thought it might be over the heads for the kindergarteners, but a good amount of them deciphered a message I put on the board using a binary code to say "Tech is cool!"  

Keith Haring

25 years ago, today, Keith Haring died at 31years old. We will continue to learn about his life and work!! 

Wacky Wednesday!

  Today I primed the rain barrel to prepare it to be painted by the 4th grade class. It's part of the Barnegat Bay Blitz and Rain Barrel Challenge.  Last year our 6th graders painted a barrel that was voted 3rd in the whole state of NJ!!! 

   I've been waiting for a warm enough day to do this and let's face it- it's February- not much choice!! We need to finish painting it by next month so I had to get it primed!                                        

      I sprayed it in the grass (with protection for the grass) in front of the school.  Good thing I bought three cans of paint. I almost used all of them!!

    This year's theme is the Barnegat Bay Watershed.  We researched and chose animals of the Barnegat Bay Watershed to put on our barrel.  We can't wait to show you!!

Here's the primed barrel. Step one done!!

Here's a few websites with info on what we are doing:

http://www.nj.gov/dep/barnegatbay/rbc.htm

http://www.bbwef.org/

     Today was the last day of the first session of Technology Club! We had so much fun!!!  

     We learned how to do stop action animation movies and played some Minecraft.  

      Here are two sites that help you learn how to build things in Minecraft:

http://www.plotz.co.uk/

http://minedraft.net/

      Ask your kids to show you their world.  You may be amazed at what they have built! 

Keith Haring

   Today some classes began learning about the artist Keith Haring.  Keith became famous in the 1980's for his chalk drawings on old advertisements in the NYC subway system.  

     Unfortunately, Keith became ill and died at the age of 31.  His art lives on! Check out more of his art and life here:

http://www.haring.com/

The kids can go to this site and create digital art like Keith did and play games, too. Kindergarten tried it out today!

http://www.haringkids.com