The Mannsdale Metropolitan Museum of Art
In the Mannsdale library, we often combine a love of reading with visual art lessons. Ask your child about some of the fun books we have shared. Kindergarten and first graders got to meet "Al", the alligator puppet, who has had a difficult time getting up every morning since school starts so early. He taught us a song with motions to go along with his book, Waking Up is Hard to Do. Second graders try to win the golden shelf award after reading The Shelf Elf. Our older grades have met The Library Dragon and learned about doing online searches after reading Our Librarian Won't Tell Us Anything. We have been singing songs, reading books and checking out each day. Hopefully, these Mavericks are becoming life long readers and learners!We created two murals after reading There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and Only One You. We have also been working on a unit about Native American art with our fourth and fifth graders from which they created beautiful brightly colored molas.We created oil pastel and watercolor resist cells to tie in library skills with science during rotation class.Recently our first grade library classes read Giraffes Can't Dance. This story has a wonderful message and teaches the main character, a giraffe named Gerald, that everyone is unique and special. "We all can dance when we find music that we love," is author Gil Andreae's moral of the book. We created collages of our favorite illustrations from the book in the style of Henri Matisse. Kindergarteners have been singing about "Pete the Cat's New Shoes." This new read aloud has a song which is a precious way to introduce rhyming narrative.We read Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree with some of our classes. We created trees after learning about positive and negative space. We also have been learning about Native Americans and reading Native American literature.
Another project we have created in library class is an abstract piece in the style of Sonia Delauney. We discussed geometric shapes and painted in complimentary colors.
We have also created "Buddy Classes" where an older student can teach a younger one about art. The older students recently wrote and performed puppet shows for the younger grades.