Update on the Year

We have been working hard on a number of things this year- from symmetry self portraits, Rousseau inspired tiger paintings, Van Gogh Starry Nights, and friendship villages, paper sculpture, and now hand knitting. Art has been a blast!


We studied the artist, Henri Rousseau and learned about his "dreamy" paintings. We then made our own brightly colored, dreamy tiger habitats.

We did a unit on self portraits. 1st and 2nd created their own portrait schema's.

3rd, 4th and 5th created "Symmetry Selfies" using digital media, and pencil. 

We learned about the Cave Paintings of Lascaux, France and did some writing, too!

Second Grade learned about volcanoes in science, so we integrated the unit into art! Students researched different volcanoes from each continent and did a presentation to their peers. We sculpted animals from their volcano's region, and got to explode them at the end. We even made the front page of the NWA paper!

We learned about the artist, Vincent Van Gogh, did opinion writing, and painted our own Starry Nights. 

Right now, we are learning to finger knit (2nd-5th) and weave (1st). The kids LOVE this! They have chains at the end that they can make as necklaces, bracelets, or headbands. They have been making them at home and wearing them to school. 

It is so exciting to see how students are growing and learning this year. Thanks for stopping in!

Sketchbooks and Start of the Year Goals

One of my goals this year is for each student 1st through 5th grade to have a sketchbook of their own in art. This is a huge goal for a few reasons.

I had to buy around 650 composition notebooks from Walmart, get them to school, and find a good way to store them so that the kids can easily access them. 650 books=32 boxes! That's a lot of boxes, and there is one little me. The possibilities were endless! 

Below you can see, it was an even bigger challenge than anticipated loading the boxes into three shopping carts by myself and hauling them across Springdale in my little car to Sonora and unloading again. (The boxes did not revolt, however.)

We will be using our sketchbooks to draw preliminary drawings for projects, sketch and brainstorm ideas, practice the elements and principles of art, and write artist statements and art observations. I am excited about being able to implement literacy into the art room! I believe every subject, from art to PE, can be cross curricular and serve to move students forward in their education.  

Yes, I only see the kids once a week for 40 minutes, but it is worth it for them to be expressive through their writing as well as their art. That is part of being an artist! 

Getting the sketchbooks organized by class- I am BIG on organization!!

Students will be able to find their sketchbook organized by teacher in a shelf system marked with their teacher name. 

Another new edition to the art room this year is Arkansas Art Common Core Curriculum. The Springdale elementary art teachers met over the summer at a seminar at Crystal Bridges to refine the vocabulary and come up with a power standards sheet for each grade level. We are really excited about this, because we know exactly what our students will be learning ON ONE SHEET!  I have

attached them
below for you to look through to see what your child will be learning in art if they are an elementary student in Arkansas. 

 Some new visuals around the classroom!

Students will see which vocabulary words they have mastered

We will start with a drawing unit this year

The line is starting somewhere new this year! Watch out students!

Looking forward to another great year!

Mrs. Cartmill

Gardens and Landscapes

We've been getting in the summer spirit with gardens and landscapes at Sonora!

First and second grade did a cross-curriculum unit on the garden. We mixed some science and literacy into art! 
We went outside and learned how to plant some radish seeds, and all the different parts of a plant. 
We then got to read a story about a little girl that imagines growing all sorts of odd things in her own garden like chocolate bunnies, seashells and jelly beans! 

We imagined what we'd grow in our own gardens and made a garden painting with patterned flowers, and our own imaginative plants. 
Their artworks turned out great!

Fredrick Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes, 1859 

Student work in progress

Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders looked at 19th century landscape artist Fredwick Edwin Church for inspiration for a drawing study. They started by doing a writing exercise about what they saw in the painting, thinking like an artist traveling through new, unexplored territory. They sketched, outlined, then used watercolor crayons to color in the style of the Fauv artists. The Fauv artists didn't want to use the natural colors- instead they used bright, primary colors for their landscapes.

Painting by artist, Derain. Example of Fauvism that students looked at to start adding color

The students really embraced the freedom of color, and their paintings turned out so vibrant and wonderful for it!