Seventh Grade students are creating gnomes!  

Love the mustaches!

Things are starting to come together!

A drill hat for those hard mining jobs?

Each gnome, though unique, needs to include certain things:  a hat or head wear and two objects representing the student.

When the gnomes are finished, we will fire and glaze them.  

Short history of lawn gnomes:

Garden statues have been popular since the Renaissance, but many people think of lawn gnomes as a contemporary idea.  Gnomes have been used as decoration since at least the late 18th century when the first ceramic "house gnomes" began to appear.  In 1847 Sir Charles Isham brought back several terra cotta figures from Germany to decorate the gardens at his home Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire.  Among those figures was the oldest known surviving example of a lawn gnome. That gnome, nicknamed "Lampy", is still at Lamport Hall but insured for over a million pounds!  

Gnomes continue to be popular today.  Travelocity famously used the traveling gnome as part of their ad campaign.  The idea of a traveling gnome is based on "gnoming" where a lawn gnome is "kidnapped" then pictures sent back to the owners from the places the gnome "visits".  An animated movie also played on the iconic image - "Gnomeo and Juliet".

Whether considered a treasured part of the garden or total kitsch, gnomes have become an iconic image.

- Miss Tomaso

First Grade 3-D Rainbows

Each student was given strips of colored paper for the rainbow, each one a little shorter than the next. When glued onto the paper, they make a nice arch and separate just enough to see all the colors. Cotton balls or napkins on the end for clouds and voila! - a set of beautiful rainbows to go with our portraits.

First Post of the Official Blog!

Welcome to the new blog for Chase County Schools Elementary Art!

My name is Miss Tomaso.  I am teaching Kindergarten through Eighth Grade in Imperial, Nebraska. This will be my third year in Imperial!  :)

It is time to enter the digital age and show off the awesome work being completed in the elementary art room.

Our first project of the year was the Rainbow Portrait mural.  Each student created a monochromatic (one color) self-portrait.  When they're all put together, we have a beautiful rainbow!

Rainbow Portraits!  Students from Kindergarten to Sixth Grade.

Kindergarten has art for the first time this year.  Very excited to see what their little hands will create.  :)

Seventh and Eighth Grade students also come to Miss Tomaso's art room, the first year for Eighth Grade as well.  

Here we are about a month into school.  Some very exciting things happening in the art room.  Pictures to be posted soon!  

The first unit in Elementary Art is Color.  Each class has a lesson focusing on different parts of color and how we can use it in art.

K - Color Box

1 - Rainbow Fish

2 - Mr. Roy G Biv

3 - Strange Worlds (Fauvist painters)

4 - Name Grids

5 - Mandala

6 - Color Wheels

The Rainbow Portraits pictured above fit perfectly into the color unit.  At the bottom of the case, First Grade had fun putting together their 3-D Rainbows.

Looking forward to a colorful year!

This year I was also very proud (and humbled) to be chosen as the 2013 K-12 Nebraska Art Educator of the Year.  Such a huge honor!  Thank you to the NATA (Nebraska Art Teachers Association) and Julie Ryan for nominating me.  

- Miss Tomaso