This was an interesting week for the Milky Way class as we started our learning activities for our second line of inquiry (LOI) in UOI. After learning about some of the basic elements and forms of art, now we are moving on to a deeper way of looking at arts and that is identifying the meaning behind artworks. We started this LOI with the storytelling of a picture book called In My Heart. In this book, the students learned how a lot of different feelings can be contained in our hearts. As the character from the book goes through different emotions, the students noticed the changes in the illustrations of the book. The students realized that art can also portray feelings.

For our first activity, each of the students got a heart-shaped paper where they drew the emotions that they usually feel in their hearts. They illustrated these feelings with colors, lines, shapes, and things that they think are appropriate for a specific emotion. All their hearts turned out lovely.

Next, we had a gallery walk, where we try to analyze the emotions in some pages of picture books. The students first identified the elements of arts that they see, including the kinds of lines, colors, and shapes the picture has. Then, they try to find an emotion that suits the illustration. This task was quite challenging for the kids, but they soon get a hang of it and they enjoyed looking at pages of picture books.

The Milky Way students also looked through lots of picture books this week. They chose pages of books that were interesting for them and also tried to analyze the emotions hidden in the illustration. These activities are meant to expose them to various forms of art so that they will have a broad and concrete understanding of what art really is.

We’ve been loving our art exploration, this unit! We hope that you are also enjoying learning what we are doing in the Milky Way classroom! Have a pleasant weekend, everyone!