SEPTEMBER 2016

Dear Parents,

My name is Tom Nimmo and I have been a teacher here at PS82 for twenty-four years. For the last 18, I have been the art teacher. In my program I encourage the students to think creatively and to express themselves artistically. I try to show the children that we all have our own unique perspective on the world around us.

Over the course of the year, students learn about the elements of design. These are the basic building blocks of art. Things like line, shape, color and space. And the principles of design which refers to the way we apply these elements such as expressing movement in an artwork or creating patterns. Over the course of the year, students work with many different kinds of art materials such as crayons, paint and markers. They learn about art from other cultures, art history and famous artists whose work influenced the art world such as Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh.

Recently, students in grades one and two have been working with shapes. They have been combining simple shapes in order to create more sophisticated shapes such as horses and other animals. They then cut them out and created a background. Students in grade three created paintings of birch tree forests. They learned about positive and negative space and creating texture. Students in grade four learned to draw a city street from above using one point perspective. And fifth graders are learning how to create a complicated drawing of a house by focusing on the simple shapes they see in the larger picture such as walls, windows and doors.

From one grade to the next, I encourage the students to develop their artistic skills and to apply these skills in ever more sophisticated ways. As an art teacher, I urge you to encourage your children’s artistic abilities. Even if they don’t grow up to be professional artists, their capacity to think creatively can be applied in many ways in many other areas of their lives.

Sincerely,

Tom Nimmo