Want to go with me to the White House?!  Let’s go!  Click on the link above for one of the best virtual field trips ever!  While you are there, click on Decor and Art to see ALL of the incredible artwork inside!  It is like a museum!  Hmmmm….now, where should we go for lunch?

I already started the first book, Priceless – How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures and it is a good read.  Just click on the link above to find out the details.

We will be getting a new principal when school starts up again in July.  If I were doing the hiring these are the qualities I would look for to fill the position. These are the qualities that come to mind if you asked me to describe the leader that we have had in David Henriott at Arlington Elementary for the past 10 years.  Thank you, Mr. Henriott!

Click on the link to find some fun art activities to put on your summer vacation calendar!

THINGS TO DO AT THE IMA

• Ask for a Family Guide at the Welcome Desk on Floor 2 for tips and fun suggestions to help structure your visit.
• Hunt for colors, shapes, or farm animals with young children.
• Challenge older kids to a quick look at an object before recalling what they saw.
• Play a game. Pick up an Art Search & Find game at the Welcome Desk.
• Talk about what you see. Explore the galleries on a Family Tour and get an up close look at objects on a Hold It! hands-on cart during the 2^nd & 4^th Saturday of each month.
• Visit the African Activity Art Space on the Floor 3 in the African Art Galleries for interactive activities for families and adults.
• Be inspired in Star Studio - a free, interactive space, for families to imagine, explore, create, share, and collaborate with art in new ways. Activities in Star Studio are self-guided. Work with a Teaching Artist during scheduled programs. To learn more about programs in the Star Studio classroom, please check the IMA calendar.
• Make something. From April to October, participate in Art in the Park on Sundays, noon–4 pm.

Every year when 3rd grade reads Charlotte’s Web they hang up the banner that my husband painted. I just love that this happens every year. I love traditions. Lots of changes are happening at our school. I know change can be good, but it can still make you sad. Seeing this made my today a little better.

So,  welcome back to the blog!!

I am so proud to share that my school is a finalist in the Clorox Power a Bright Future Grant Program!

All we need now are your votes!!  There are two ways to vote every day until December 19th.

Go to this link to vote online:

https://powerabrightfuture.clorox.com/m/nomineedetails/?nid=988

Text your vote:    988pbf to 95248

Vote twice a day until December 19^th!

At an early age, Wassily exhibited a very special gift called synaesthesia cognate. This gift gave him the ability to hear colors and see sounds. This special gift was encouraged by his father who enrolled him in private drawing lessons as well as lessons in piano and cello.Between 1886 and 1892 Kandinsky studied law and economics at the University of Moscow. In 1889 he and a team studied the life of the people in the Vologda district in northwestern Russia. He was impressed by their folk art and the interior decorations of the village houses. Their art influenced his early style.In 1893 he accepted a law faculty position at the University of Moscow. Three years later, when Kandinsky was thirty years old, he decided to become an artist. He left his promising career in law to attend art school in Munich, Germany.

His art was greatly influenced by an exhibition of French impressionist artists. The Impressionists used color and light to show their subjects rather than painting in fine detail. The works of Claude Monet interested Kandinsky very much. Subject matter played a secondary role to color in his paintings, and reality and fairy tale seemed to blend together. This approach would influence Kandinsky’s work for the rest of his life.In 1901 Kandinsky founded the “Falanga” artistic movement and school where he shared his ideas about art. His paintings from that period, like The Blue Rider (1903), show his use of color to express an emotional experience rather than reflect nature.By 1913 Kandinsky was producing the some of the first completely abstract (non-representational) compositions in the history of art. They made no reference to the natural world and were inspired by pieces of music such as Composition VII (1913).

In 1914 Kandinsky returned to Russia. Two years later he married Nina Andreevskaia, the daughter of a Czarist colonel. From 1918 to 1921, he devoted much of his time to painting and teaching color analysis.Between 1922 and 1933, geometrical elements became increasingly important to Kandinsky – particularly circles, half-circles, the angle, straight lines and curves. One of his first works to include these geometric shapes was On White II (1923).

When Nazis closed the Bauhaus school in 1933, Kandinsky moved to France. He remained there for the rest of his life.Wassily Kandinsky died on December 13, 1944, in his studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. He is recognized today as the pioneer of abstract art. His non-representational paintings paved the way for the development of the Abstract Expressionist movement that dominated American painting after World War II.

These are from Kindergarten: