Mrs. Gover's Art Room

This past week in the Byam art room, students had the opportunity to participate in the Chelmsford Friendship Park playground redesign. The town of Chelmsford has requested ideas for the new playground design, and students were given the choice to participate and work on their designs during art. Our classes discussed that the new playground should be accessible to all, including children in wheelchairs. We talked about what types of things you can find in a playground, and many students went way beyond the ordinary in their creative drawings. The students were thrilled to be a part of a community project, and loved designing their dream playgrounds! We appreciate that the town is consulting the most qualified playground experts- the kids who play on them! The finished designs will be dropped off at the town offices in December, and may be displayed on www.robertsfield.org or at the Chelmsford Public Library. For more info on the Roberts Field Friendship Park playground

I wanted to share a very brief post today about one way that we use technology in the Art room! I was really excited last week to be able to use my "ladybug" document camera to show some oil pastel techniques to my students. It is sometimes tough for all students to see exactly what I am doing in a demonstration at one of our art tables... so I decided to try out projecting my demo onto the screen last week, and it worked out great! The students especially loved to see how you can use a paper clip to do "sgraffito" in layers of oil pastel. 

This week, we are thrilled to announce the Collage Center is opening for students in all grades! (Our littlest ones, our K students, are working with a tabletop Collage Center with a bit more limited selection of tools and materials.) Students are discussing how collages are made and how to work with the Collage Center supplies. Next week we will be looking at a couple of amazing collage artists, including Eric Carle and Henri Matisse. The students and I are really excited to have this new center open and to be able to use some fun new materials like buttons, foam shapes, and pom pons! The collages are already coming out so beautifully, so I just hung the new Byam Art Gallery display of Kindergarten Collages! Each month in the Byam Art room, students compete for the coveted title of Art All-Stars for their grade. Every week, they can earn up to five points for showing expected behaviors such as coming into class with voices off and sitting on the rug, giving quiet