13 Moon Calendar Necklace

Fourth grade students learn about how the Native Americans use the lunar cycle as a calendar.  There are 13 moons in a calendar year, hence the name of the necklace.  Each necklace represents one year.  There are 13 moon beads with 28 seed beads in between each moon, representing the 28 days in each lunar cycle.  The children created patterns between each moon.  Some even used ideas from what is happening in nature at the time of the moon to decide on their pattern.  This shows a great connection to the Native Americans.  They named their moons based on what was happening in nature.  For example, there is the Strawberry Moon and the Maple Sugar Moon.  Can you figure out what time of year those moons happen?

Completed necklaces.

 

Working on a necklace.





Really Cool Art Videos

     As a special treat before the long weekend, Ms. M's students at Merrimac, Tower Rock, and Black Hawk had a movie day.  They watched some really cool videos about all different kinds of art and artists. Click on the pictures below so you can watch them too!

Enjoy!

Tower Rock Birch Tree Forests

3rd and 4th graders at Tower Rock  observed birch trees and simulated their outer bark by using the paint and scrape method.

Students then painted a warm background for their trees using watercolors.

(Heidi, Morgan, Gracie, and Briar demonstrating "Happy Brush" and "Sad Brush" )

Dia De Los Muertos Skulls at Tower Rock and Merrimac

Earlier this month, 3rd graders at Tower Rock and 3/4's at Merrimac learned about the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead.

They learned to draw a skull, then added symmetrical designs.

 The final step was to color their designs using vibrant colors and add some sparkle.

Watercolor Landscape Paintings - 5th Grade Tower Rock and Grand Ave.

Tower Rock Studentsdrawing landscapes outside.

Tower Rock Studentsdrawing landscapes outside.

Pen and ink drawing ready for painting.

Pen and ink drawing ready for painting.

5th grade students at Tower Rock and Grand Avenue are working on watercolor landscapes. Students selected local landscape pictures and then drew pen ink drawings  of the landscapes, paying close attention to the repetion and textures found in the grasses, fields, and trees. Then students painted the landscapes using traditional watercolor techniques such

Tower Rock Mural

Each student at Tower Rock created a piece of the Flower Garden Mural. The background of each students piece is their hope or dream for the 2012-2013 school year written to create texture.
The flowers are 3 or 4 layers of  recycled paper, handmade paper, magazines cuttings and several
different stylized papers.

Rock Art - Grand Ave. 4th Grade

Mrs. Markley's Class

Mrs. Markley's Class




Rock Art by Cassie Ziegler

 


Rock Art by Elizabeth Lenerz




Class Rock



The fourth grade students at Grand Avenue created Rock Art based on the pictographs and petroglyphs made by the Paleo Indians that  lived in Wisconsin over a 1000 years ago. The large class rock was created in a cave like setting, students had to paint an image with very little light and on a vertical rough surface rather than a flat table.