Category: Art

Game Design: Where Language, Art, and Science Collide

What does it take to design a video game?  Our Grade 7s are beginning to examine the skills and strategies that game designers use, including character creation, instructional writing/walkthroughs, mapping and level design, and more!

We began today by viewing this interview with one of the creators of the Mario series! We learned that video games have been around since the 1970s, and have continued to grow and change as technology, culture, and trends shift and change! Feel free to check out the video below:

Some questions to discuss at home:

  1. Have you ever played any video games (including PC, mobile, etc.)? What was your experience like?
  2. What skills do you think a game designer should have and/or develop? Why?
  3. Try playing the ‘original’ version(s) of Mario. What did you notice?

Super Mario Game:

https://supermario-game.com/

Information about the history of Mario:

https://mario.nintendo.com/history/

 

 

Clay Skulls: Our Socials and ADST Project

Our Grade 7s have been hard at work learning about early humans with Ms. Ramen in Socials class! We invited a artist in residence to come in and teach us how to sculpt a human skull out of clay. After sculpting, they were fired in the kiln. Then, we glazed the skulls and they will be fired a final time. We can’t wait to see the final product soon!

Some questions we suggest parents/guardians can discuss at home:

  1. What features did you include in your skull model? What species of hominin did you choose to create?
  2. How does your model skull look similar or different from our own (real) skulls?
  3. How old do you imagine your skull is? What conditions was it in (ex: desert, water)?

Happy Pizza Day!

Did you know today is National Pizza Day? We celebrated by learning about different pizzas around the world, and by designing our own bizarre, delightful, or gross pizza toppings!

We’ll be creating a piece of writing and an art project based around our unique pizza creations. Check out the video below and consider the following questions:

-What is your favourite pizza topping? What flavours do you like?

-Would you try a banana pizza? Why or why not?

-Do you think every country and culture has their own ‘kind’ of pizzza?

Van Gogh Inspired Sunflowers

I am so impressed with our Van Gogh inspired sunflowers so far! We used oil pastels to create layered, detailed sunflowers. Just like Van Gogh used colours like yellow, blue, and orange to represent how he felt and how he saw the world, we used colours creatively to craft these pieces of Art!

Vincent Van Gogh

Today, we read a story based on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. We learned that most people did not appreciate his artistic talents, and thought he was too strange, too foolish, and too unique to be a famous artist. He only ever sold 1 painting during his entire life, and suffered from mental illness. But now, he is considered by many people to be one of the greatest artists of all time. His paintings are worth over $100 million. Here is a video of the ‘immersive’ exhibit in France. Maybe, one day we can see it in person!

Sketching like a Scientist: Our Observation Journals

What does it mean to ‘sketch like a scientist’? We learned that sometimes, scientists keep observation journals with detailed illustrations of what they observe. We focused on drawing what we saw in front of us, not the picture in our heads.

I am so amazed by how detailed our illustrations turned out! We have some talented scientists in our room!