Pumpkins!
This week, Advisory groups competed in our annual Middle School Pumpkin Decorating Contest! Voters, including Lower School students and faculty & staff from throughout the school, will determine the winners for 5th Grade Favorite, Scariest, Most Original, and Best Overall! To get a glimpse of this year's creations, click on this link.
What we are learning...
Ms. Shannon Leenstra, Lower & Middle School Art Teacher
What is your favorite color? Fuschia.
What is your favorite book? Where the Red Fern Grows.
What is your favorite movie? "On Golden Pond"
If I hadn't been a teacher, I probably would've been... an archaeologist.
Who is your favorite musical artist? John Denver.
Where were you born? Renton, Washington
If you could travel anywhere through space and time, where and when would you like to visit? Machu Picchu, 15th century.
Who was your favorite or most influential teacher? Mrs. Hillger, 4th Grade, hands down bar-none the best!
I always love the beginning of the year in Visual Arts. Students who have been at Annie Wright for a while all know what is coming in the next year, and most are pretty excited to be able to learn about the things that they have seen hanging in the halls over the years. Sixth Grade gets excited about learning to draw in linear perspective. It is a dramatic project that allows the students to really see their progress on paper. I send them out into the corridors to draw on the very first day of the unit and they are usually pretty proud of the work that they do. Then we spend some time in the classroom learning about linear perspective, practicing it, and looking at art work by the some of the masters such as Leonardo de Vinci and Pietro Perugino. We look at how Brunelleschi experimented with mirrors and paintings in order to prove the concept in the 1400’s and how fresco painters in Pompeii may have had an understanding of it long before that, but it was buried in the ash of Mt. Vesuvius. Finally they take their new found knowledge and head back out to draw their corridor again. The results are amazing to say the least. I get goosebumps when I see how much progress the students make in such a short amount of time. The best part is their own reactions when they place their first drawings next to their finished drawings and they get goosebumps! It is a truly wonderful experience to witness the rise of student confidence before your very eyes. I am truly blessed to be a part of it.
