Thursday, January 21, 2016

Students Rebuild Pinwheel Challenge

Hi Star Academy Parents!

You may have heard your child come home talking about the "pinwheel challenge" taking place in Art class. Every year, Studentsrebuild.org creates a new challenge for students to get involved in helping those in less fortunate situations than ourselves.  I have had students participate in Students rebuild challenges for several year now and find the experience to be very rewarding.  Please read the blurb below from Studentsrebuild.org regarding this year's challenge:

Join Students Rebuildthe International Rescue Committee and Global Nomads Group to help Syrian youth from conflict areas recover from crisis and grow into happy, healthy adults. We're hopeful you'll learn more about the situation Syrian youth are experiencing, and then participate in the Challenge by making and mailing in pinwheels. For each pinwheel you send in, the Bezos Family Foundation will donate $2—up to $400,000—to IRC’s Healing Classrooms program. The more pinwheels you send, the more children you’ll help!

We have set a school wide goal to create a total of 750 pinwheels, which will raise $1500 for Syrian youth.  I am excited to report that we should meet our goal!  Many students have also been making pinwheels from home and bringing them in to help reach our goal.  So exciting to see students engaged and getting involved!  You can visit http://studentsrebuild.org for additional information on this pinwheel challenge.

Thanks,
Emily Shane

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

January in the Star Academy art room

January is such a fun month for Art!  Students are back from a long winter break and are eager to get back in the swing of things, particularly, creating art!  We are starting the month off by turning the Star Academy hallways into a winter wonderland.  Students from all grade levels are learning various art principles and techniques such as:

foreground, middle ground, background
positive and negative space
chalk blending techniques
watercolor tape resist
watercolor salt effect

Here are a few examples of the masterpieces going up in the hallways of Star Academy:






We will continue the month of January by participating in a community service art project and will create a collaborative Kindness Quilt during the great Kindness Challenge week at the end of the month.  Stay tuned for details and pictures of these two exciting events coming soon!