Anyone can draw a flower. But do you really know what a specific flower looks like? Try this for yourself. Draw a flower by looking at a real blossom and let your eyes caress the shapes to see what new information you can discover. Don't be limited by what you "think" a flower "should" look like. See the bloom for the very first time through art, just as your children are seeing flowers. In Kindergarten we smelled, touched, examined, grew and even tasted flowers. We looked at artists' renderings of flowers, critiqued art, read about flowers, learned about their life cycle, and discussed flowers as symbols which punctuate as well as augment celebrations and are essential to our existence, both for mental and physical health.

When learning a complex discipline like art, many learning instances are needed. Learning art is a bit like looking a strange landscape. It is easy to make mistakes about it if we only look from one direction. Only by walking through the landscape, and seeing it from many perspectives can it be understood. Much of what we learn in art is learned during the process of making art. We have to walk through it many times to understand it well.

Many think the final product is the reason for making art. Even most professional artists are not as interested in the final outcome as they are in what they can learn during the process. The process is a search, an experiment, and a quest. These are some of the questions to ask yourself in order to become aware of what you are learning during this art making process. Artists answer these questions for themselves by trying various options until they cannot think of any other ways. How can I communicate ideas visually?
1. How can I communicate my values, feelings visually?
2. How can I make this say something about who I am?
3. How can I learn new skills or how I achieve mastery of older skills?
4. How will this work help me learn to help others learn art (how to teach art)?

Oil Pastels In our first attempt at colour mixing, we examined both the medium of oil pastels and the shapes of flowers.	Chalk Pastels For some obscure reason, many aspiring artists avoid chalk pastels. But, we find the messiness is an advantage!	Water Lily Art Flowers can grow in water? How are they anchored? Don't worry, "go with the flow” and enjoy the art!
Crying Flowers Art To see a project that is mature and detailed beyond the years of our students, based on a story told by Jeff Stockton, look inside and be amazed by the quality of art.	Abstract Art . Abstract Art is art that is not an accurate representation of a form nor object. The artist takes the object and then either simplifies it or exaggerates it using these things.	Flower Petal Art Miss Roth led us to relook at flowers through smell, touch, and carefully examinination. We took them apart to notice what we could not otherwise see.
Narcissus Art A large area of focus in our “Flower Power” inquiry is based on the Narcissus. The flower is named after Narcissus in Greek legend (see the full legend under Jeff Stockton).	Picasso Art Nearly 30 years after Picasso's death, his art still shocks and challenges the public. The Grade One's taught us about Picasso' cubism style and we explore portraits in a new way with their leadership.	Audrey Mabee Art In exploring Audrey Mabee's style of minimal figure art, we used the bare minimum of marks to create a person or the suggestion of a human figure. What contrast to our Narcissis flower portraits!
Acrylic Flower Art We were lucky to have Chester Lees teach both painting techniques like brush strokes, painting with the brush rather than drawing with it, as well as the art of painting with acrylics. Prepare to be amazed, sit down, now you are ready for inspiration...	Negative Space Fish Art Turn that frown upside-down and don't be so Negative! Negative Space that is! When Audrey Mabee came to volunteer with our students, we continued to explore the concept of negative space by creating fish art with watercolours.	Eric Carle Art We all love the art from the Eric Carle stories that we read and treasure. But how does he create these wonderful images? And what would it look like if we attempted to make such art in our Kindergarten classroom? "Click" on to see the results.
Annora Brown Art Do you think you can scratch a picture? It may sound crazy but that is just what we did to explore the art of Annora Brown. Enjoy the product of our final art exploration in Kindergarten.