Posts

Art Updates! September 23rd, 2025

  Happy Fall!  Here are some updates from Elementary Art. First of all, here is the link to the Google photos file for this school year:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/VRZ3mJB1iyoZ2b5A9 Kindergarten- We finished our unit on clay.  The students learned how to create a textured clay relief by using tools.  They made two pinch pots.  If they had extra time, they made a clay snail.  They learned about where clay comes from, and what a kiln is.  After our clay unit, the students studied line.  We made cities inspired by the book called Maybe Something Beautiful by using different kinds of line.  Students also learned about having a good hair day with their brushes when we painted our cities.  1st Grade- Students learned how to score, slip, and seal by making monster pinch pots.  The students were to come up with a name and personality for their monsters. We learned the stages of clay, and reviewed what a kiln is. Now the students are cr...

Overview of Art Curriculum

    Elementary Art Curriculum         In elementary art, we work with themes and big ideas as a guide for each unit. For example, some themes may be “dinosaurs”, “self-portraits”, or “hybrid animals”. A big idea may be “healing”, “place”, or “time”.  I try to make almost every lesson interdisciplinary in some way.  Art processes and techniques are taught during each unit, but the actual idea and design is all of the student’s own thinking. I encourage students to break away from main-stream designs and symbols, and come up with something all their own. I also encourage something called reappropriation. This is an approach to making something that is already a symbol, icon, or famous work of art and recreating it in a completely different way. Artists often borrow other’s ideas and then transform them to create a new kind of meaning.     I teach about the elements of design, which are line, color, shape, form, value, te...

Welcome to Stargate Elementary Art!

                   Hi!  Welcome to the 2025-2026 school year.  This blog will be a place that I provide updates.  I will send the link out through infinite campus each time I update it.  If you haven't read my profile, here is a little about me:  About Me        Hello! I have been teaching art at Stargate since 2015.  I received my Bachelor's degree in the Arts with a major in Studio Art from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon in 2008. After I graduated, I became a certified Recreation Director and directed all the recreation at a nursing home for a few years. In 2012, I went back to school for another two years to pursue my teaching license in art education at Metropolitan State University. I have taken many classes in gifted education, and plan to continue my studies of gifted education.  I am passionate about social and emotional learning and mindfuln...