Art On Centre

Website Update To the wonderful adults and children of the  Curley community  Art teachers and followers of our Blog, I will not be updating this site until the following school year  9-16-2015  I want to thank everyone in the Curley community that has supported the arts at The Curley K-8.  Without your support, funding and wonderful children none of this would be  possible.  There have been many changes this year in addition to teaching art, and I am excited to say my work outside the classroom will focus primarily on a pending adoption and taking care of my family, and working in my studio.   Thank you to everyone for the wonderful comments and ideas you have contributed to the website over the years.  We  just reached 50,000 views this week.  This website has many visitors from around the world some as far as  Japan, Sweden and Australia  who come to see the work we are dong in the ...

  Ms. Cullen’s K2 class built boats or ships out of paper and straws.  The students used magazines, paper, colored with crayon and straws as the masts. The materials they used will enable the boats or ships to float in the water on their own.  The crayon covers the regular paper with wax to protect it from the water soaking it.  We first did an experiment by coloring the paper sails with marker.  we then dipped the paper in water and the students watched as the sails colors mixed together like watercolor paint and dripped into the water making the paper sails weak and could be easily torn.  I explain that using crayon on the sail would protect the sail because crayon was made from wax.  The students then asked “well what is wax?”  I asked them does anyone know what wax is.     One students said “You mean like a candle?”  and another relating it to what was familiar said “ we have wax in our ears, do you mean like that?” I sa...

Information for Parents Regarding Art Class Grades The winter term report cards were sent home with your children at the end of March.   You may have notice the field for art grades was empty.  Due to an error with the class lists they could not be entered online.   If you would like to have a copy of your child's grade in art class please contact me here or via my BPS webmail address. See the link below.  We will be checking the lists to to see what happened this term and I am hopeful the administration will have it fixed for the next grading period.  Contact- Ms. Drakes cwall@bostonpublicschools.org

Please watch Bill Moyer's piece on the privatization of the Public School System . It's coming to a town near you. ( actually it's are already arrived). Read more >> . http://billmoyers.com/episode/public-schools-for-sale/

              The correlation between a student’s enthusiasm about learning and a teacher's enthusiasm about teaching is...high. Very high.  #edchat — Blunt Educator (@BluntEducator)  March 16, 2014 Do You Agree?

 “The literature of America should reflect the children of America." Lucille Clifton     Where Are All The People Of Color in Children's books?

We hope to see all the families this morning at Ms. Taylor Knight’s performance of Sleeping Beauty at 9:00 am sharp. Maybe leave the dog and cat at home.The students are very excited and ready to go!

I couldn’t  resist reposting.

Our new 4th & 5th grade up cycled 3D project in progress  Check back soon for more finished projects or see them at the Spring Arts Showcase April 11.

So much snow, snow, snow.  We are ready for it to go!  In the photographs below you can see the beautiful flower fields in the Netherlands.  From far above the land and on the ground the Dutch grow the most breathtaking flowers ever seen. We looked at the flowers fields of the Netherlands in an online slideshow made by the Dutch flower farmers showing their beautifully patterned fields. The flower fields are so bright and vibrant they don't even look real! There were so many patterns to see bright colors and types of flowers.  The pictures are just a sample of what we looked at.  Flower Garden Park From high above

The Third Grade Students Response To The Question  "Why I Love Art" I use this assessment exercise as an informal way to observe whether or not the students are able to reflect and articulate  in an authentic way,  what they are learning in art. Their answers may surprise you.  It is also a way for me to document that the students are their developing a personal voice in visual art expression. I find it interesting that some of the students used text as an artistic images. An example below where a student uses the term “ flowing array of colors ” in a visually expressive way is a great example. I couldn’t resist adding this one. Even though she did not write the question that was posed to her.  It isn’t very often we hear how we are doing as teachers from the students.  Vocabulary  This idea of using words or  text as art  to understand the meaning stems from t...

Pictures from The Curley Winter Music Concert 2014 This year’s Winter Music Concert on January 16, showcased many of our talented Curley student’s.  Thanks to a collaboration between teachers, parents,  administration and our partner, The Community Music School of Boston. This years performance was one of was one of the most entertaining and well planned events to date.  The students sounded amazing along with the help of our on talented musicians/teachers playing live it was a beautiful show! Bravo Everyone!  

What Are Your Thoughts as Parents, Teachers and Artists on the new Teacher Performance Evaluation Process?    As a specialist,  I agree with the article in the Times. I personally feel as if I have less time to discover new ideas for lessons, no time to see what other artists are doing both locally and through media and I feel that I need three more hours in the day on top of the three I already do outside of the school day to do evaluation work.  I found out the hard way that doing what I love most, developing new lessons and experimenting with the ideas in my studio first then connecting them to the Common Core, ELA, and new standards is a long time consuming process that can keep me up until the wee hours of the night thus getting far less sleep than I used to.   For me, I spend much more time trying to connect what I am doing to the state mandated teacher rubric so that I can prove I am teaching and prove the stude...

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I would like to wish everyone who is part of our Curley school and community a happy and safe holiday season.  It looks like we will be starting on Monday the 6th of January instead of Friday due to an impending snowstorm. So get out your sleds and have a good time at the Tea Cup this weekend. Be safe! Future Project Update I have been busy planning so many exciting new projects for the New Year. We had many exciting new ideas we came up with together before the break and I am looking forward to starting them. In the next month you will be seeing many new 3D projects such as dioramas for the 4th and 5th grade art classes.  I would appreciate if everyone could bring a box to the art room before al our holiday packaging is recycled so we can get started!