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Greetings and welcome to the Art Department for the Decatur City Magnet Program - Benjamin Davis (K-2nd) and Leon Sheffield (3rd-5th) Elementary Schools. Our students create many different projects while learning about the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design, while using a variety of media. We do create community service projects throughout the year to give the students a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of making a difference through their art.
No Right Brain Left Behind
This is a blog about on going projects, exhibits, and other art ramblings...
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1. January has come and gone!
Well, it is February already...both schools have been making Valentines for Veterans and collecting care package items for soldiers overseas. Our goal this year is 2,000. BD's cards are due Tuesday, February 1st, and LSM's are due February 4th. We hope to exceed our goal so that more Veterans can enjoy the artwork our students have made. This is a great way for students to use their talent, their art, to make a difference in a Veteran's life.
I'll upload more pictures of the students creating their cards soon. Our student council at both schools will be helping out with the collecting, counting, and packing of the cards and care package items. I'm sure we'll have a great turn out from both schools! I'll update you this weekend with the total number of cards, packages sent overseas and the local and state recipients of our Valentines!
 
posted 1/31/2011 11:06 PM
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2. December already?!
Well, it is December first and we have finished many ocean projects at both schools, and ended our CAFE (Children's Art For the Environment) sale. The final tally of how much we have made for the Dauphin Island Sea Lab is close to our goal of $2000. I will have the grand total later today and the check will be send to the DISL in honor of all the schools that participated. It's amazing how much our community gives to help others!
Third graders will finish their large sea creature paintings next week so that they can be hung up in the Little Theatre & Adventure Lab. This will give the illusion of being inside a large aquarium!
Benjamin Davis students have finished up their African arts projects. First grade created African shields that are symmetrical in shape with designs added in heavy crayon. Second grade made African masks that are symmetrical in shape with faces that are just wild! Some students cut the eye holes out and others made intricate designs that are really interesting.
Ben Davis students are currently working on their Christmas Program so we are rehearsing on the stage this past week and next for the upcoming show in two weeks.
The All City Art & Music Festival at Decatur Baptist before Thanksgiving was wonderful! The fifth graders that participated in the elementary choir had a great time and all the middle school & high school choirs and bands were very enjoyable! The art work from all the elementary, middle, and high schools showed the broad range of talent across the system! The displays were really fantastic!
posted 12/1/2010 2:02 PM
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3. Long Week...
Friday is finally here and we have a moment of rest before we start all over again!
This week I took down the CAFE exhibit at the Carnegie Visual Arts Center and found out that we have made $1044 for the Dauphin Island Sea Lab! Our goal was $2000 ... Since we were short of our goal, all the art work has gone back to its respective schools and will be sold for donations from $5 to $30. I will be putting up the artwork up at LSM and BD that did not sell or was not borrowed for a rotating display at Central Office, and invite you to come purchase your child's work for a great cause!
We are hoping, my cohort art teacher Tammie Clark of Somerville Road and West Decatur Elementary Schools, that we will have started a trend that will go across the State. The Alabama Education Association's newspaper The Journal will be writing an article about our CAFE exhibit and spreading the word of using Art as a means to make a difference in our world!
Other news - 4th and 5th graders are finishing up their sea creatures in oil pastels on black paper for a neat exhibit of the ocean at night!!
3rd graders are beginning a HUGE project of creating large oceanic sea creatures as a group project. These will be made of paper and painted, cut-out and affixed to the walls in the Little Theatre, to make it look like the inside of an aquarium! We will also have some research about each animal so you know a little more about what swims in our oceans!
2nd graders are finishing up their second painting of sea creatures drawn by using shapes, lines, and colors - three of our Elements of Art.
1st graders are finishing up drawings of sea creatures in their environment using markers and crayons. They, too, are using the three Elements of Art, line, color and shape.
Kindergarten was with me for the first time this semester and we started a big fish drawing using shapes and lines. They are very cool!
Creative Crew worked on a few more Veteran banners for Veterans Day and our Valentines for Veterans mailings in early February. They also painted two banners for our Partners in Education CB&S Bank, and ULA (United Launch Alliance.)
Other than that... we had our first Club meeting on Wednesday - the Art Club! We came up with many different ideas that we would like to create during our next 4 meetings - November 3rd & 17th, December 1st & 15th.
Please come out to buy your child's CAFE art work for a great cause these next few weeks!! Thank you for your support of our program!
posted 10/22/2010 5:41 PM
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4. A Proud Moment
This weekend was the CAFE (Children's Art For the Environment) at the Carnegie Visual Arts Center here in Decatur. This exhibit and art sale will benefit the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in its recovery from and research of the Gulf oil spill. Please look at the slide show on my homepage to see the wonderful exhibit and the patrons of the arts that bought some of this wonderful art work.
The schools that participated were LSM, Ben Davis, Somerville Road, West Decatur, Eastwood, Austinville and Frances Nungester Elementary Schools, and Decatur & Austin High Schools. There was such a great variety of work- from paintings to prints, drawings to sculpture. Four art teachers also contributed pieces of their own art, as well as Susan Estes who donated two prints, one of her Jimmy Buffet benefit concert for the Gulf, and one of a Galapagos Island crab.
One of my proudest moments was when one of my 5th graders, Malik, a very talented young man, had his sumie` painted lobster bought by one of the women from the Chamber of Commerce. She was so excited to purchase his work and she wanted his signature closer to his lobster so she could frame it properly. I was so proud for Malik I had to get a picture of her to show him, to encourage him to keep creating. I put their pictures on my homepage so you can see them.
Watching the parents and students browse through the exhibit to find their artwork and pick out other pieces to buy is one of the reasons I teach art. To help instill in my students that not only can their art make a difference in the world or someone's life, but through their act pf creating they become future patrons of the the arts. They are able to appreciate what goes into creating a painting or sculpture; they understand the process by which they must go through to make something look dynamic, or realistic, or is just pleasing to their eye. That is what it truly boils down to -- their experimenting with different media, expressing themselves, and understanding what they like to look at.
This exhibit, what was not sold this weekend, will be available at the Carnegie this Friday and possibly next week. I will let you know if the pieces will still be available at the Carnegie or if I can bring them back to our schools to sell. Our goal was to raise $2,000 for Dauphin Island Sea Lab... I would like to surpass that and even spread the word to other art teachers throughout the state. I will be submitting an article to the Alabama Education Association's Journal to promote what we have started so that more children can make a difference through their art for a great cause! Our middle school and high school students AND teachers benefit greatly from going the DISL and it would be a shame not to work to aid in their recovery and research of the effects the oil spill has had on our environment above and below the waters edge.
I am so proud of our students for donating their work to such a worthy cause!
posted 10/13/2010 12:09 PM
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Linda Miller's Site
Decatur City Magnet Schools
Leon Sheffield & Benjamin Davis Magnet Elementary Schools
801 Wilson Street NW
Decatur, Alabama 35601
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