Art Educator:
The Art Room
The ART DEPARTMENT
Our elementary Art Department is a BEST PRACTICE award winning department. Last year, the art and computer departments combined efforts to produce "Multicultural Digital PowerPoint Art Portfolios for Young Children". These portfolios won first place in the state of New Jersey for BEST PRACTICES in the VISUAL and PERFORMING ARTS. Additionally, the portfolios won first place for their age group from the ETTC's Technology LESSON PLAN contest. This year's Traveling TechnoTeddy Bears took first place for K-2nd grade in the ETTC Lesson Plan contest. For more information about our BEST PRACTICE, click on button.
The focus of the elementary art curriculum centers around a multicultural approach to art education. The children experience a sense of wonder and appreciation as they travel around the world in their imagination during their art period.
Once a location and culture are identified and explored, the art of the region is examined. From here, an art project, indicative of the area or culture, is created.
The year's traveling is culminated at ART NIGHT. ART NIGHT is an arts festival of all of the places the children learned about each year. During Art Night, the parents and the children explore our cultural arts museum, view their artwork, listen to music of the area and time period, learn about the locations visited, sample the food of the region, experience the glow in the dark hall and end with a concert and family art project. A great time is had by all.
Last year's ART NIGHT was a huge success! Thank you to all of the volunteers who made our wonderful event so amazing.
Last year's theme was "Manuel comes to America". The children learned about a little boy from Costa Rica, who moves to America and goes to school here. While attending school he learns AMERICAN HISTORY of the past century. "Manuel" is based on a real little boy who's mother hosted one of our teachers, Marissa Wetzel, last summer in a teacher exchange program. Although the family didn't really move here, the mother, FlorElena came to visit. If you'd like more information about FlorElena, Costa Rica and our teacher exchange project, press MANUEL. To learn more about this year's ART NIGHT, click the ART NIGHT button.
This year's Art Night is "A World of Art:A World of Peace". Date to be announced.
To view samples of the artwork the children made, click STUDENT ART GALLERY.
Additionally, the children in the Art Department made TRAVELING TECHNOTEDDY BEARS.
Traveling TechnoTeddy Bears is an interdisciplinary art and technology unit designed by Teri Gragg and Maureen Guenther to incorporate art, technology, history, geography, language arts, math, PE and music. The lesson focuses on American history at the turn of the century. Our kids learned about Theodore Roosevelt and the naming of the Teddy Bear via a PowerPoint presentation. Then they made their own bears utilizing sketching, Microsoft Publisher and various art techniques. Several of these bears were then sent TRAVELING! Our Traveling portion of the project incorporates geography into our curriculums by sending the bears to teachers around the world. These teachers then use this lesson and create their own bears. They send us home a sample of their bear. THEN THEY PASS IT ON…the process is still continuing. We can't wait to see how many different places our TechnoTeddy bears will visit. To learn more about Traveling TechnoTeddy Bears, press the TECHNOTEDDY Bear button.
