REFLECTING.

DEAR PARENTS

This is my last blog post. 

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say "good bye" as your child's art teacher. It was a great pleasure working with your kids, they are amazing! I wish for all of them to keep being creative and think outside the box.

I will still be around as my own children will be continuing their education at ASOY during our stay in Cameroon for the years to come. I will continue to focus on my social enterprise MLE Empowering Apparel, my VISUAL STORTYELLING projects with NGOs and International Organizations.I will also continue doing portraits/family sessions in my fully equipped photography studio in the Golf area. Should you be interested, don't hesitate to contact me emily@emilypinnaphotography.com

MS.EMILY

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Reflection is big part of the PYP curriculum- so we also reflected a lot about our art work, and keep on doing so. 

First grade then created a flower-garden with water colors and different patterns:

While second grade did the same exercise but instead of a cat did a dinosaur as it was fitting well into the UOI they were currently working on.

Third grade also focused on a watercolor flower garden with different patterns as well as learning about collage techniques using african fabrics. 

Both fourth grades and fifth grade have been introduced to the art of TYPOGRAPHY. This is just one of the many fonts the children created, and can now install on any computer they like! We are all especially excited about creating our OWN fonts which we will scan and which can be installed on any computer and used with the keyboard! In case you want to create your own font too- or the kids want to do additionals, here is the link: www.calligraphr.com

For anyone who wants an introduction to it there is a brilliant video: https://youtu.be/wOgIkxAfJsk

Grade 4 E curated an exhibition of their own abstract paintings inviting parents and friends. The aim was auctioning off their art work to raise funds for art supplies for the children living at the orphanage St. Therese. There was a lot of learning involved, and the project was integrated with the UOI about economics and business. Finding the right starting price for each art work, designing invitations as well as a certificate of authenticity were some of the learning targets. We raised the incredible amount of 360.000 CFA and will not only buy art supplies but also buy some new, badly needed mattresses. Here are some pics of ART FOR IMPACT

All fifth graders were involved in the PYP exhibition and did an awesome job. They've partly used the fonts they created for titles and exhibition material. 

WELCOME!

Hi,

My name is Emily Pinna  ("Ms. Emily" for the kids) and I have the pleasure of being your daughter's/son's art teacher at ASOY this year.

I'm taking this opportunity to introduce myself: I just relocated to Yaounde with my husband and two out of three children (my oldest is in her second year of college in the UK), Annabella is in 8th grade and Arianna is in 5th grade at ASOY. I am a visual storyteller, photographer and social designer. I also recently launched my own social enterprise MLE Empowering Apparel and I'm very excited to be in Cameroon and to make a difference through my work.

My goal for this website is to keep you up to date with what we do in the art room, I will most likely update this site once a month to give you a review. 

Please feel free to contact me with any question or concern, but please note that since I am only a few hours a week at ASOY, the best way for communication would be by email at epinna@asoy.org.

Have a wonderful day,

Emily Pinna

PS: You'll notice that I am doing more or less the same projects with all grades, but the level, depths and challenge varies depending on the children's age and maturity level.

MAKING.

First and second grade worked respectively on creating life-size bodies in motion, which are currently up on the walls around the ES art room. We discussed movement and form and ways to show both in art. The use of color and how different colors can express different feelings as well as how different colors make us feel, was the center of our class exploration. 

First grade has been looking into one-point perspective drawings and used their newly learned skills to prepare a giant Austrian landscape background for international night. 

As part of second grade's UOI: How do we express ourselves: people recognize and understand culture the class  took great pride to produce a big french flag by hand printing on a large piece of fabric....also, a big cardboard Eiffel tower is in the making!

Third and fourth grade focused on printing, learning about positive and negative spaces and created their first own emoji prints with great success.

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Both fourth grades started also to work on Hukasai - inspired paintings as they are representing Japan on international day. Both fourth grades started to work on Hukasai - inspired paintings as they are representing Japan on international day. 

Fifth grade worked with clay on their Egyptian Sarcophagus as part of their UOI.

We started introducing some linoleum prints.

Also, with international day coming up, we created a Nigerian flag with a map in the middle!

EXPLORING.

We've been very busy across all grades exploring The colors of feelings. Art, as music, is able to influence our moods, and often it's the color which does that job. We looked at work from Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse and other artists to observe their use of colors. We had very interesting conversations and explored our own feelings and assigned colors to them individually. 

GRADE 1 : In addition to the above, we explored patterns and texture inspired by Eric Carl's books and collages and created our own flower garden poster which hangs now in the grade 1 homeroom. We created half photo-half drawing self portraits.

GRADE 2: We created half photo/half drawing self portraits. We talked about our different facial features. We also explored Kandinsky's art and did a class-art piece where we all drew Kandinsky inspired circles and put them together as one. 

GRADE 3: We explored collages made out of different patterns and textures taking Eric Carl as an example and used fingerprint to create different textures ourselves. We learned that sometimes the end product doesn't matter so much, it's more about the process :) We explored Kandinsky's art and did a class-art piece where we all drew Kandinsky inspired circles and put them together as one. We also worked on the set design for the holiday show. 

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GRADE 4: Mr. Nyugha's class helped creating the set-design for the upcoming holiday show, by first doing a mock up and then transferring the many different holiday symbols to the wooden background, while Ms. Erika's class explored water colors.

GRADE 5: In line with the UoI " Where we are in time and place" we are working on creating our own artifacts, based and inspired by ancient civilizations. We learned about the Egyptian hieroglyphs and split up in teams, to write our own messages which than we decoded later on. We are drafting now a design which we will eventually do out of clay. We also worked on the set design for the holiday show. 

Hieroglyphs decoding

CREATING.

PREK4

For this past few weeks PreK4 worked on portraits of people they love. We also printed and colored leaves and created a cat picture out of newspaper. 

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KINDERGARTEN

We had great fun with a variety of projects: we explored the texture of leaves, painted on them with white tempera paint and printed them on black paper. Once dried, we colored them in. We also created cats and dogs collages out of newspaper and did some finger print animals! Lots of experimenting with different materials and learning to focus on our work. 

G1

These past few weeks have been full of exploring and creating different art pieces. We created images out of shapes, did newspaper collages, explored leave printing and created spiders out of our own thumb-fingerprint.

G2

as part of the grade 2 UoI "who we are" we've just finished building the class mascot: a 3D Golden Eagel. The whole class was involved in the process, from brainstorming, sketching, ideating, iterating, painting, trying and failing and retrying. We chose to do the head, body and wings out of cardboard. For the feathers we decided to do them individually to represent the diversity in the classroom. Finally we added some wire strings and the giant eagle is now hanging from the ceiling in the homeroom. The students were very happy about their teamwork and upon reflecting on the learning process, they all agreed that:

1) everything is possible. When you have the imagination and creativity and you dare to make mistakes, you can create beautiful things.

2) teamwork pays of. The fact that many are contributing towards one common project, makes the outcome very successful. 

3) the mascot represents who we are: a team that can create awesome things.

G3

Grade 3 did various art projects for the past few weeks: they learned about optical illusion artists, and created their own op art piece. We also created collages out of newspaper in the shapes of cats and dogs. We're experimenting with different material and textures and explore how we can use them. 

We've been working on personality profiles. Focusing on the inside vs. outside of each person. The children were drawing their 'inside' - things they like, thoughts, things they care about, feelings etc. which are more on the inside than what people can see when just looking at us. 

G4

We've been working on personality profiles. Focusing on the inside vs. outside of each person. The children were drawing their 'inside' - things they like, thoughts, things they care about, feelings etc. which are more on the inside than what people can see when just looking at us. 

We also created portraits out of newspaper collages. 

G5

The class finalized their project (part of the PYP unit 'how do we express ourselves') and presented their poster, explaining their choice of the brand name, slogan and general idea.

Further the students worked on their op art pieces, and started their personality profiles, focusing on the inside vs. outside of each person. The children were encouraged to draw their 'inside' - things they like, thoughts, things they care about, feelings etc. which are more on the inside than what people can see when just looking at us. 

THE FIRST FEW WEEKS.

PREK4:

We started out talking about different shapes we encounter in our surroundings and sponge-printed circles, squares and triangles. We also used fingerprint to paint our moms, colored our hands to print them on paper.

We talked about different lines (straight, dotted and zig-zag) and drew them on paper and created lines out of play dough. 

KINDERGARTEN:

We started with writing our names on a folded paper, outlined the letters, cut them out and flipped the paper to then have a unique shape for our personal monster, which we decorated.  

We talked about lines, and learned the different vocabulary (straight/vertical/horizontal/zig zag) and used those lines on a paper. 

As part of the unit of inquiry (UOI) "who we are" we did some self portraits.

GRADE 1:

We started with writing our names on a folded paper, outlined the letters, cut them out and flipped the paper to then have a unique shape for our personal monster, which we decorated. 

We traced our hands and colored them. We talked about lines, and learned the different vocabulary (straight/vertical/horizontal/zig zag). 

We created self portraits and decorated our portfolio map which will hold the artwork for the whole year.

GRADE 2:

We started with writing our names on a folded paper, outlined the letters, cut them out and flipped the paper to then have a unique shape for our personal monster, which we decorated. 

We traced our hands on paper and colored them. We talked about lines, and learned the different vocabulary (straight/vertical/horizontal/zig zag). 

We are now working on a 3D golden eagle (the class' mascot) which will be hanging from the ceiling once it's done. We sketched some wings and cut them out of cardboard, glued paper on it and are working on the feathers now: we decided we wanted the feathers to be in different shapes and colors to represent the students in the class.

GRADE 3:

We started with writing our names on a folded paper, outlined the letters, cut them out and flipped the paper to then have a unique shape for our personal monster, which we decorated. 

We traced our hands on paper and cut them out. We talked about melanin and why we all have different skin colors. We mixed our own skin colors and painted the paper hands. We talked about lines, and learned the different vocabulary (straight/vertical/horizontal/zig zag) and created some patterns which served as the background for our hands. 

We started a personality profiles project. We teamed up in pairs of two and  helped each other to trace our profiles and then cut them out both on a black and a white paper. On the white part we are drawing/writing what is going on in our insides, what we like, what we think, our feelings.

GRADE 4:

We started with writing our names on a folded paper, outlined the letters, cut them out and flipped the paper to then have a unique shape for our personal monster, which we decorated. 

We traced our hands and cut them out. We talked about melanin and why we all have different skin colors. We mixed our own skin colors and painted the paper hands, glued the hands on a paper background and then the children were drawing something they felt represented them, or something they were reaching for. Some kids also produced self portraits.

We had a look at Op Art and started working on our own piece (this is still ongoing).

GRADE 5:

We started with writing our names on a folded paper, outlined the letters, cut them out and flipped the paper to then have a unique shape for our personal monster, which we decorated. 

We traced our hands on paper and cut them out. We talked about melanin and why we all have different skin colors. We mixed our own skin colors and painted the paper hands, glued the hands on a paper background and then the children were drawing something they felt represented them, or something they were reaching for. 

We had a look at Op Art and started working on our own piece.

In line with the PYP unit of inquiry 'how do we express ourselves' I split the class in teams of 3 and each team got a persona/target audience to whom they need to 'sell' a toothbrush to. The different teams are coming up with their brand name and tag line (slogan) and started creating their own poster ads.