The art room has been a hub of excitement these last 5 weeks. The school (staff, students and parents) have all been getting ready for the big night. This was my first Art Show within a primary school context ,and I wanted it to be a fantastic night to showcase the students work, and for students to leave with a sense of pride. The theme of the Art Show was "Doorway to Imagination." Each grade level chose a theme in which to create works within their classroom to go along with the works created in Visual Arts. The hardest part of the blog post was choosing pictures, as our photographer did an amazing job and got over 400 photos!
The staff as excited as I am!
I first created a timeline in which to get every task done before the big night. I had one for all staff, and one just for me! It was 5 weeks of hard work putting in lots of extra hours. (and not much time to blog!) Luckily, I work with an amazing staff, who were ready to jump on my vision (and I admit, it was a big vision) and go even further with it then I could have imagined. They all volunteered extra time to help put up work, (with bribes of lollies and love) and create their doorways/hallways much to the delight of our students.
Finally after a few nights of getting ready, (and a day of creating suspense by closing the school and not letting the parents seeing the work!) we were ready for the unveiling of the show. Thanks to the handy pre-organising using a google doc, all the staff knew where to go!
The night had begun!
Handing out the brochure with the map of displays and list of activities
(including when the song performances were on)
The air was filled with a vibrate energy of excitement and a sense of community that is really hard to put into words.
Students and parents walking through the foundations "Jungle" themed hallway.
Wandering across the breezeway through the lanterns that were made in Science. ( Every class was involved!)
A group photo organised by a regular Mum at our Community Hub! Loved how excited our families were.
Paintings by a mother, hung in our Community Hub.
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Some lovely year 1/2 girls who were all thrilled to wear pretty dresses to the art show, just like Ms. Huber.  An extension project for a high level 3/4 student. He created a unicorn out of wire, and got together an artist team to help fill it. I was really proud of him!  This was another extension project. I has a huge happy/proud teacher moment when he showed off this art piece to his Mum on the night. His Mum couldn't believe he created it!  |
Our 5/6 Team Leader and our Science teacher serving out the food.
Our translator is sitting with some parents eating the BBQ. With her help I was able to communicate to an entire cohort of our school that other wise would have missed out.
Our Principal hanging out with some students in the Neural knit display and BBQ area.
There were many activities happening at the art show....including getting to make some art in the art room!
One of my favourite pieces made on the night was " Keep calm and go to the Art Show". Cheers to our Play and Say teacher for being in the Art Room with the students and families.
A proud foundation student beside his mosaic piece.
The 3/4 recycled mosaic boxes planted and placed outside filled with plants.
The 3/4 area was the enchanted forest with clay mushrooms and big murals. The classes used symmetry lessons in their maths to create leaves hung off finger knitted vines. This made me so happy that classes were integrating visual arts into their lessons.
The 3/4 students clay mushrooms, and the tree extension project.
Ned Kelly Display.
At the beginning of my time being the art teacher at this school, I applied for a program called the Song Room. Lena from the song room has been a wonderful asset to our school. The 5/6 students are performing at the Melbourne Town Hall on this coming Monday with them, and we decided that our visual art show would also be a great time to showcase what we had been working on. We also had our 3/4s and 1/2s perform a few songs that we had worked on the last 2 terms.
Two of our 1/2 teachers have been really inspired by having song room within the school, and created a song with their class that they also performed on the night.
It was a huge turnout!
I was still trying to manage the safety of parents and students when I was surprised by gorgeous flowers by my principal. :-)
The outcome of this art show, was felt the next day when I had a grandmother who couldn't speak any english was insisting that she help me take down the artwork. Her daughter came to me later and said that I let her feel useful, and she was so happy to be part of the school, and that she was so happy she came to the art show. The students also came running up to me the next day exclaiming how much fun they had, and how much they enjoyed it. It made all the effort and hard work seem so worth it. I am really happy with the success of it, and how supportive all the staff and parents were along the way.
