fifth grade naturalists

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
-Henry David Thoreau

Each fifth grade artist used one of his/her own photographs taken on our photography field trip to the beautiful Missouri Botanical Gardens to use as inspiration for a drawing, ceramic sculpture, and painting. This is a rigorous exercise in observation and perspective! It is also a wonderful way to experiment in different mediums to discover new strengths and work with challenges.

For the drawing portion of this project, students learned how to make a value chart and show roundness of form using shading, highlights, and shadow with special 2H-6B drawing pencils. They chose to render their full photograph, a portion of the photograph, or to abstract the photograph.

won't you be my neighbor

These sweet little houses were created by the kindergarten artists. We are still busy working in our "Building a Better World" theme!



You've probably heard of this before: all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten. This BBC story, Crossing a St. Louis street that divides communities, has really stayed with me since I saw it last month. In fact our school is very near to the Delmar divide. I feel dismayed and hopeful at the same time.


(this image is a still from the BBC video news story)