News Crew: Cartoon Math Project

Hey, Grade 7s!

Please read this update from our News Crew about your amazing to-scale cartoon Math projects:

“This project was a great start to our unit on Cartesian plains. This required the skills of both art and math as we had to measure the lines to create a grid. With a small picture of the cartoon character, we were trying to recreate on a bigger paper. We were blowing up the pictures from 1 Cm to 3 Cm, so the picture on the bigger grid was significantly bigger.

The first thing we did was choose our character… it was a little outdated, and [we wish there was an option for] Bluey. The usual characters were an option, like SpongeBob, Hello Kitty, and a weird starfish. But there were also things that you wouldn’t expect, like Homer Simpson.

We start with a blank piece of paper, not lined, not turned into a grid, just blank. The first thing you must do straight away is get a ruler. (A note to families: if your kid doesn’t have a ruler, please get them one, since if they don’t have one they will be fighting everyone else to get one of Ms. Ramen’s spare rulers). Afterwards, we worked on creating grids on both the big blank paper and the tiny printed picture of the cartoon character we chose to do. We had to copy the grid of the tiny cartoon picture to the big paper. After carefully drawing the character, we were now ready to use more of our skills by colouring. After that’s all done we have finally finished our project and we can now sit back and enjoy the view of all the huge cartoon characters outside of the computer lab.”

Thanks, News Crew!

Skulls Project: Student Voice

Hello, Grade 7 students and families! I’d like to formally welcome our first post from Div. 2’s ‘News Crew’. They will be periodically updating our class blog with information about projects, assignments, etc.

Below an excerpt from their overview of the clay skulls activity our class completed for Socials:

“This project was a great overview of what we learned in Socials. Creating skulls that represented our earlier ancestors. These skulls ranged from early Ardipithecus to our generation Homo sapiens. We started by using clay to put together our skulls. We needed to round out the clay and then use tools like chopsticks to help make the eyes. Ms. Jesse Lyn (our artist in residence) taught us about clay making and how ceramic is made.

To make the ceramic skulls we first need to learn how it happens. The first material is clay which can be found at the bottom of streams and riverbanks. Then we need to model the clay like we did with our skulls. After the clay sculptures or in this case skulls, gets taken to a giant oven [kiln] that warms up between 2124’f and 2264’f (1162-1260’c). After it is done being fired it is given back to us to glaze.

After about 2 days or so Ms. Jesse Lyn brought back out hominid pottery. As we were going to start the 2nd phase, glazing. (Please note: glazing is a pottery term of when you put color into your pottery, but it could also be the icing on a cake. The first phase is what we’re going for!).

You grab a brush of a color you think fits your skull and then you paint. There is red paint, a couple of different grays, [beige and white], and a darker color. “Why would you paint your skull red?” you might ask. Well, the reason is quite simple. When the clay gets fired the colors change drastically so when you get your skull back the red will now be a pinkish-gray. Each group took about 10 minutes, so with 5 groups the glazing took roughly 50 minutes. And so, we had to wait 2 more days. There would be a chance that you wouldn’t recognize your pottery after it was glazed, but that’s why the teachers thought ahead (like they always do from years of experience) and made us engrave our initials into the back of the skeleton’s skulls.

So, we wrapped out skeletons into some wrapping paper and brought it home. It should now be at your house and you’re staring at it while you’re reading this. Or, your kid might have lost it.”

Thanks so much, News Crew!

-Ms. Ward

Who Can Be An Artist?

As we continue exploring our identities as artists, we have been discussing what makes someone an ‘artist’. We brainstormed whether or not an animal could be classified as an ‘artist’ or not! According to our discussions, an artist means someone who: shows creativity, produces some type of art (painting, sculpture, writing, song, etc.), improves their skills, does art as a job or hobby. According to our definition, would the dog in the video (below) be considered an artist? What do you think?

Skull Sculpting: Blending Art & History

Did you know that some historians have found evidence that sculpture as an art form has been around since 25000 BCE? Today, we had the privilege of learning the fundamentals of clay and sculpture from our artist in residence. Our classes began creating a clay model of hominid species of their choice. Later, we will glaze them and reflect on our experience. Take a look at some of our progress photos below:

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:

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

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!

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!