Our Chihuly Chandelier Finds a Home

Our Chihuly chandelier was installed in the commons area today.  It seems a little lonely all by itself, so we need to get started on our next one soon!

Zoom! This year is really flying by....it's time for an update.

Wow! This school year is just zooming by.  I usually feel like I start off at a run and then we slow to a walk and then everything takes off again in April and May.  This year has been usual, because we started off running and have never slowed down.

I started an Art newsletter to share what is happening with parents at home and I forget to add all that information to our blog.  But here is a quick overview of what we have been up to so far:

Kindergarten has been learning all the basics of Art.  They have covered drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture.

1st grade has been reviewing all the things that they learned in Kindergarten and have focused learning more about subject matter.  At this point they should all be able to explain what a portrait, still-life, and a non-objective picture are.

2nd grade is once again building on what they have been learning for the last two years.  We worked on collaborative sculptures for the commons area.  (I'll post more about this later.)  We have just started clay and their pottery is looking amazing.

That sort of sums up what has happened over the last 99 days of school!


We have a student intern with us from Truman this semester, Miss Lisa.  She visited our class last year and loved us so much she wanted to comeback for her internship.  We are thrilled to have her and learn new ideas from her too.

Lastly, I have been doing a lot thinking and planning trying to get digital art into our classroom.  As of today, we have registered with donorschoose.org requesting help for purchasing an iPad.  The possibilities for an iPad are a simple as a digital drawing, but what I would love to see happen is animated movies or interactive books created by our students for each other to enjoy.  I have seen a lot of creative ideas happening with iPads in other Art rooms and I am really excited to get this started for my students.  With donorschoose.org you can choose to donate a little towards funding a project or a lot.  It is your choice.  Every little bit helps us to reach our goal. So see our project's progress.....  http://www.donorschoose.org/we-teach/1730664.-340888601

Creating a Chihuly-inspired Chandelier from Plastic Bottles

All we needed for this project was some plastic bottles,  (We used about 500 bottles to create our large chandlier) acrylic paint (Ours was donated leftovers.) scissors, string, and a frame to tie the bottles onto.

Collecting the bottles and preparing then took the longest.  All bottles needed to be clean and free of their labels.  Once we had this done, the students went to town painting them.  There was no certain way they had to be painted, so each bottle was unique. We did use the color scheme of blue and green, because those were the colors we had the most of in our stash.  Once the bottles were dry after painting, the bottom was cut off and the rest of the bottle was spiral cut up to the mouth of the bottle.  String was tied onto each bottle through the mouth area and then tied onto our frame.  (A tomato cage covered in chicken wire).  I started off doing everything for the students except the painting.  After a while it became very overwhelming when I couldn't keep up with the students and their finished bottles.  Eventually, I cut a slit at the base of the bottle and the students did the rest.  I was really impressed with how they took on the responsibility and how quickly it got finished.

Here is our finished chandelier!  We are just waiting for the lift, so that we can hang it in the commons.  It was a great project and really got the kids interested in Chihuly and working together.