Friday 18th November was Reading Day, and this year’s celebration of all things book-related was bigger and better than ever.
One of the main highlights were our ‘book doors’, with the students decorating classroom doors to look like a specific book, or to reflect a favourite reading theme.
As you can see, the children’s hard work and enthusiasm really paid off, and all the students took turns to visit each others’ classrooms and view the results of this wonderfully novel 🙂 idea.
Another important aspect of the event is the fact that, in the morning, teachers and parents read to the kids. In the afternoon, it’s the older students’ turn to read aloud to the younger children, making sure that they’ve picked a book the little ones will love.
In between, various other activities take place, and the choice this year was particularly impressive, ranging from bookmark-making and writing book reports to a lively book exchange bazaar.
Special thanks to Ms Bergquist and Frau Jäger for organising a super day!
In the 1950s, America became the leading centre of western art.
Artists such as Joan Mitchell, Wilhelm de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock combined purely abstract painting with the Expressionists’ emphasis on bold colour and line. The result? You guessed it: Abstract Expressionism, or AbEx for short.
In addition, the act of painting itself became important, with every dribble, splash and splotch valued as part of the end result.
At the time, many members of the public found this style ridiculous. ‘A child can do this!’, they said.
In art class, we proved them absolutely right by creating our own fantastic versions of these works.
Yet although it was fun to splatter, splodge and drip, considerations such as composition, white space, and judging exactly where to apply the marks were surprisingly important. To help the kids achieve this, I gave them a demonstration, and limited the colours to primaries and black.
In fact, the greatest works of Abstract Expressionism are far more complex than many people think, and the children’s versions were incredibly accomplished.
Pop Art
At the moment, the kids are learning about everyday materials and recycling with their class teachers. I try to reflect these themes in art classes, too, and luckily, there’s a very close relationship between household items and Pop Art.
After all, this 1960s movement transformed things we constantly use into art objects, from soup cans and comics, to photos in a magazine.
What’s more, Pop Art itself is actually a form of recycling, with the artists involved showing that even ideas and images can be re-used in different ways.
For this unit, the children created a wide variety of colourful artworks.
The younger kids were inspired by Andy Warhol’s famous soup cans to create a new range of soups with very unusual flavours, such as ‘chips’ or ‘popcorn’.
The cans were then photoshopped onto bold, bright backgrounds to create eye-popping Pop.
Another group produced a homage to the artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose paintings were inspired by comic books.
Like the artist himself, the kids carefully added dots to a template to replicate the printing effect (below).
Meanwhile, the older kids worked on a group project that turned Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa into a funky, psychedelic fantasy (famous paintings were often reworked by the Pop artists to make pictures that seemed familiar yet new).
This collaborative artwork required the use of colour values – light tints and dark shades – before piecing together painted and collaged sheets to create one (very) large image. Perhaps the best part was guessing how it would look when finished. 🙂
Op Art
Optical Art, or ‘Op’ for short, appeared in the early 1960s at around the same time as Pop Art.
Most Op Art uses optical illusions to create an uncanny sense of depth or movement, but for this project I decided to do something a little different – a kind of Pop/Op hybrid.
Warhol and other artists were fascinated by Before / After advertisements. We’ve all seen these: a classic advertising format in which two images side by side demonstrate the (always amazing) benefits of a product or service.
Left: Andy Warhol, ‘Before and After 2’, Pop Art 1963 / http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/popart1963/items/show/111 Right: Roy Lichtenstein, ‘Step-on Can with Leg‘, 1961
Using black, blue and red ink viewed through blue and red filters, we managed to create a rather magical Before / After experience: two pictures in one, seen separately by applying the science of colour and light.
Above: the images viewed through the filtering lenses.
American artist Robert Indiana first turned the word ‘LOVE’ into a Pop Art image in 1964, but in 1970 he produced his even more famous sculpture, which remains iconic to this day.
Using this work as inspiration, the kids created cardboard sculptures of either their names, or terms such as ‘cool’ or ‘wow’. Interestingly, no one opted to produce their own version of ‘love’, although the word seems a pretty good one to me!
The only rule was that the letters should all connect together, and the results were incredibly varied – as colourful and unique as the children themselves.
What’s next?
This more or less brings us to the end of our art (history) classes for the year.
In the new term, I plan to continue looking at late modern and contemporary art – there are so many fantastic painters and makers the children can learn from, and I particularly want to focus on female artists who, for historical reasons, were badly underrepresented in the Modern period.
I also want to spend time revising techniques such as blending, shading, colour values and perspective.
Although I’m looking forward to these classes, I’m sad that the current 6th formers will no longer be with us.
They’ve worked very hard indeed, and contributed so much to the success of the Art programme. But it’s good to know that they can take home a portfolio filled with beautiful and ambitious artwork as one reminder of their time at IMS.
But from an art historical perspective, Cubism is such an important movement that I definitely wanted to present it to the kids.
The key to understanding Cubist art is the fact that it integrates multiple viewpoints into a single image. Painters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque or Olga Rozanova wanted to challenge ‘reality’ by showing how things look from the front, behind, or the side, all at the same time.
In order to replicate this process, the older kids combined line drawings of objects photographed from three different angles, then completed their work using colour palettes borrowed from the Cubist artists themselves. It’s not an easy task, but the results were outstanding.
The younger children made Cubist portraits, and although they found it a little strange to draw things like two noses, or eyes in unusual positions, they understood the concept and produced some beautiful, colourful work.
Apart from looking fantastic, Cubism reminds us to question what’s around us: there’s never just one way of looking at the world.
And this, in fact, is exactly what the class teachers were asking the kids to do with regard to the theme of ‘fast fashion’. Many of us buy clothes from stores such as H&M or Primark, but what is the true price of these cheap, mass-produced goods?
The often-surprising answers formed the basis of a presentation and project which the kids completed during Freiarbeit. Cubism’s insistence that the truth has multiple viewpoints is relevant to almost everything.
Modern sculpture: Giacometti
Even though the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was influenced by both the Surrealists and the Cubists, his work really is in a class of its own. He is rightly considered one of the most important modern artists, so we set about making our own versions of his work.
Steven Zucker, Flickr Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
By scrunching up aluminium foil (much of it recycled), we were able to recreate the long-limbed figures he is famous for. Some of the kids opted to make animals (Giacometti did this, too) and one or two of the children decided to give their figures outfits (unlike Giacometti!).
We later spray-painted the figures to emulate the bronze metal of the original sculptures. They turned out really well – good enough to be shown in any art gallery!
Expressionism
Germany’s own contribution to modern art is immense, and for me, the powerful lines and forms of Expressionist prints (about 1905-1925) are especially wonderful.
Examples I made to demonstrate the line drawing process to the kids.
For this project, it was easy to reflect the theme of everyday materials by using both foam sheets and recycled polystyrene to create our own interpretations of these works.
The younger kids had the slightly easier task of creating line prints (above), while the older kids produced more complicated works that looked like woodcuts by artists such as Karl Schmidt-Rottluff or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
In art class we’ve been making our own versions of Pop Art, so in English class it seemed like a good idea to find out more about Andy Warhol (1928-1987), the most important Pop artist of all.
After learning more about his fascinating life, we decided to recreate one of Andy’s famous parties, with each student developing a character for the event.
Warhol loved to film the people around him, so we did this, too, editing the footage in a chaotic, home movie style similar to the artist’s own work.
The film is followed by a little bit of background on how the kids came up with their roles; the interesting discussions and research that were involved; and why Warhol’s ground-breaking influence is more relevant today than ever.
The background
Andy Warhol once said that, in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Today, we live in an age of YouTube and TikTok, and his words seem incredibly ahead of their time.
I also explained to the kids that Warhol was an early ‘influencer’, one of the first people to use art, media and social events to publicise his own life.
He loved to host parties where he was surrounded by other rich, famous, or artistic people.
Many of the guests were very creative, larger than life and sometimes a little eccentric. Others were show-offs, who liked to be with Andy because it made them feel important or interesting.
I asked the kids – all of them year 5 or 6 students – to create suitable characters for the party, and was surprised by how well and quickly they were able to do this.
They invented exotic names and ‘glamorous’ lives for themselves, but were also clear that these weren’t the kind of people they would really like to be, or meet.
Some of the kids wanted to wear costumes, so we looked at early ’60s fashion. The kids found it strange that young guys often wore suits or jackets!
We also talked about what happens at a fun party.
All of the kids thought that music was important, and dancing was a top priority for the girls. We watched videos of ’60s dance styles, which the children liked, but often found quite funny.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, alcohol was also something the kids were keen to discuss.
The children automatically connected drinking with celebrating, which gave us an opportunity to talk about this in depth.
We spoke about alcohol’s effects on the body; why too much of it can be bad for your health, and how it is banned in some cultures.
We also talked about the pressure older kids sometimes feel to seem ‘cool’ or grown-up by drinking.
Yet because it is very much a part of our society, I decided to let the actors use a champagne bottle as a prop – they insisted that the party guests would be sipping bubbly!
Watching the movie afterwards, we again discussed some of the issues it raised.
Celebrity, fame, and self-image sometimes seem more important today than ever, but it’s essential to stay true to ourselves and develop our own values.
All the kids agreed that it was fun to play the characters in a Warhol movie, but far better to get back to being themselves!
The 4-6 kids have spent several weeks exploring the theme of ‘Stoff in Alltag’ (everyday materials) and, as a final project, the children set about producing their very own clothing, decorative items and other objects from recycled materials.
The teachers presented the kids with a variety of cool suggestions to choose from, or invited them to come up with their own ideas.
Textile crafts were a particularly popular option, with cushions, bags and even entirely new fashions created from old clothes and remnants of fabric.
Some of the kids made papier–mâché from recycled paper and cardboard, then used it to produce a range of beautiful items.
Others had even more unique ideas, such as turning a shoe box into a tabletop football game.
It just goes to show what amazing things can be done with everyday materials and plenty of imagination!
In our 4-6 art classes, we not only enjoy ourselves by experimenting with new ideas and techniques, but have several other goals besides.
These include learning about important movements in art history, while also trying to connect our projects to the many different topics in the curriculum.
Fortunately, art is so rich and varied that it’s possible to link it to just about any theme – and since a picture speaks a thousand words, here’s the first in a series on great works of modern art, interpreted and celebrated by the children themselves.
Lots of different work hanging up to dry…
Symbolism: Gustav Klimt
How can art reflect the children’s classwork on poetry, simile and metaphor? In fact, many of the ideas found in creative writing are also present in visual art, and Klimt’s breathtaking portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer symbolically transforms her into a glittering, mythical goddess.
This is one of the great masterpieces of early 20th century painting, which the children interpreted in two stages: first by creating background colour and decoration, then adding gold paint and collage to their work.
Surrealism
In our unit on Surrealism, we discovered that the movement’s dream-like images were strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s development of psychoanalysis, which the kids had learnt about while studying sciences.
Many of the children produced paintings based on famous works by the Belgian artist René Magritte, while some of the older students created their own compositions inspired by other leading surrealists, such as Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dalí.
Fauvism
Colour theory! The Fauve painters used scientific knowledge of colour to create bright, vivid paintings, so this project fitted in really well with the children’s additional studies on light and optics.
The older children created their own vibrant compositions, while the younger kids produced fruit paintings in two resonant complementary colours.
What’s next? The class teachers have exciting topics planned for future weeks, and in art we’ll again complement these studies with projects inspired by some of the greatest movements in art history. Get ready for some fantastic interpretations of Cubism, Expressionism, Pop Art and more!
Or perhaps the title should be ‘Impressionists of Potsdam’?
On March 18th, the year 1-3 kids from Rubin class took a trip to Potsdam’s beautiful Barberini Museum (shown above), where they were treated to a personal tour of its incredible collection of Impressionist art.
The children learned all about this important painting movement while looking at works by some of the world’s most famous artists.
In the photo above, the children are admiring a canvas by Paul Signac, a painter who used tiny dots of colour – a technique known as pointillism – to create luminous, light-filled pictures.
Perhaps the museum guide also mentioned the fact that the painting was purchased in 2019 for a record price of £17 million pounds… or about 21 million euros!
Later, the children had time to get creative themselves and put their new knowledge of colour theory into practice by drawing pictures in warm and cool shades.
With so much artistic talent, perhaps one day their paintings will be in a museum, too!
First you have to sketch the fox then you have to take the colours (yellow, dark red, red, orange, dark yellow) then you have to draw out the fox with yellow, red and orange.
After that, get black and draw out the ears, then when you have the colouring finished you start to colour the background. The colours of the background are black, green, yellow, grey. And if you want you can add stuff like a tree or a moon or even leaves – your decision!
An art display and a wealth of scientific facts: yesterday, the kids in 4-6 set up a wonderful exhibition, the culmination of several weeks of research, planning and hard work.
The project began with the class teachers providing an overview of sciences including chemistry, biology, physics, medicine and astronomy.
The kids then chose their favourite science and, working in small teams, found out as much as possible about its history and the famous people associated with its development.
Having summarised these findings in a fact-sheet written in both German and English, as a final step – the arty part! – the kids were given a canvas and asked to paint an allegory of their science.
Allegorical paintings generally use stylised images of people to represent a concept (wisdom; beauty; astronomy), and for this reason Frau Pakhuylu provided a special lesson on drawing the human face and mixing skin tones in paint.
The resulting works of art were fantastic: full of skill, symbolism and inventiveness.
As an extra bonus, the kids presented their work to the 1-3 students, who were eager to see the paintings and learn about the different sciences.
We also had a visit from our lovely bookkeeper, Frau Schöttler, and our equally wonderful secretary, Frau Frank. Towards the end of the afternoon, parents stopped by to see the show, too.
Art meets Science… we think you’ll agree that this unusual combination adds up to fascinating new knowledge plus a LOT of fun!
There’s nothing more personal than our names. After all, they belong to us and are a big part of who we are.
It also turns out that we can use them in a surprising number of ways at school. Not just on exercise books, or at the top of a worksheet, but in cool projects that everyone seems to enjoy.
Take, for example, a maths task with a difference – an exciting way for the 4-6 kids to learn about heights, widths and angles.
All the children drew out their names carefully using just straight lines, then pencilled in all the measurements, paying particular attention to the angles created by the letters.
Colouring the results added to the fun.
In another unusual maths activity, we even found a way to convert names into fractions.
How? Let’s use GABRIEL as an example.
The whole name consists of seven letters, so in this case the denominator (the bottom number of the fraction) is
7
The next step is to count the total number of vowels.
The answer, of course, is three – A, I and E. This number goes above the denominator to give the final result:
3 /7 (three sevenths) of the letters in Gabriel’s name are vowels.
Cool, right? Below you can see Lena’s exercise, where she has worked out the number of vowels and consonants in her name as fractions:
Finally, in a further name-based project – this time for Art – the kids were asked to transform their names into colourful cardboard sculptures.
As you can see, the results were as inventive and individual as the kids themselves – a way to quite literally see every child’s different personality.
So what’s in a name? Much more than you might think!
