Mr. Mills Blog

Someone asked me the other day when we start to pack it in for the year as it gets closer to winter break. I’m happy to say that Murray continues to expect a lot from our students right up until the last day of the calendar year. I know it can be tough as the holiday’s approach, but I wouldn’t have it anyway. You almost feel like you would be doing the students a disservice.

For fine arts, the third graders are in the middle of their music paintings. This week, the students used a pencil to draw the outline of their drawing so they could begin painting. Mr. Brown and I were a little cautious with them since this is the first time all year we have painted with them, but it has been a great experience so far.

The fourth graders are just about to finish up their inspiration pictures. These will be on Art Sonia and hanging in the hallway before we leave on break. Next week, we will be doing a few art activities in the computer lab before starting a major project in January that I am very excited about.

The fifth graders are in the middle of creating their foamcore houses. Basically, they have been cutting out a pattern for a home using foamcore and they are going to glue it together. For most students, this is the first time cutting anything with an X-Acto blade and it is not an easy thing to learn AND do correctly. I’ve been happy that the students have taken it so seriously and have been very patient with each other as they share the X-Acto knives. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished products.

Download Animation Example

The sixth graders have started their stop animation videos this week. Above is an example of what they will be working on. The students are working in groups to create short stop animation videos. I showed them a 40 second stop animation that I created so they get an idea of what is expected of them. We talked about how each second of animation has about 8 pictures/second. In other words, they will need to take a lot of pictures to make their animations look just right. The group needs to decide on a final animation to create by making a storyboard. They will be working on that next week while also creating the “parts” to their animation. I expect we will be doing most of the photography after the break.

Also, check us out here on the Saatchi Gallery site in London.

Until next week….