AES Technology Team Represents AES Well!

Congratulations to EACH MEMBER of the Albertville Elementary School Technology Team!  Each team member represented our school with wonderful manners, polite attitudes, and really got to show off their hard work and projects to the judges.

Congratulations to our winners!!!

IT Test 

3rd place - Elaina Collins

General Applications

2nd place - Elaina Collins

3rd place - Brady Quarles

3rd place - Meri-Lil Massey and Elaina Collins

Website Design

1st place - Aislie Casey

1st place - Julissa Benitez and Emma Currier

2nd place - Adyson Brandon

2nd place - Will Broadhurst and Canaan Claborn

3rd place - Jonah Bilbrey

Multimedia

1st Place - Canaan Jones

3rd place - Alex Branch

Video Production

1st place - Olivia Wood

1st place - Meri-Lil Massey, Ella Kate Jones, Caroline Thomas

2nd place - Jaylee O'Dell

I am super proud of these kids!

INSPIRE WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

Congratulations to our AES students who won awards in the Marshall Medical Center South's Art Contest!

1st place - Kayla Romero

2nd place - Jensyn Seay

4th place - Olivia Wood

Foundation Choice Award - Kinsley Little

Foundation Choice Award - Lily Laverty

These students will be honored at a reception on Thursday, April 24th at 6:30 p.m. at the Women's Center of Marshall Medical Center South.  Their award-winning art will hang in the Inspire Art Gallery for one year.

Congratulations!

INSPIRE Art Contest 2014

Each year Marshall Medical Centers celebrate Youth Art Month by sponsoring a student art contest.  The theme each year is INSPIRE.  G.A.T.E. students use higher order thinking skills to help guide them through this process.  They use PRODUCTIVE THINKING to think of all the many, varied, and unusual things they could paint or draw for this contest.  Our students are great productive thinkers and have many ideas to choose from.  Next, they use DECISION MAKING skills to decide which idea they will use and also which medium with which to create their art.  These thinking skills will help them in life -- now and as adults!

Students could choose watercolors, acrylic paints, pastels, colored pencils, markers, crayons, or torn paper collage.   AES G.A.T.E. students participated in this contest.  Our school is allowed to enter 15 pieces of art.  Judges had a hard time deciding which works of art would represent AES!  Congratulations to the following students:

4th grade

Jaylee O'Dell

Kinsley Little

Tristan Golden

Jensyn Seay

Kayla Romero

Olivia Wood

Adyson Brandon

Emma Currier

Marianna Aguilar

Daniel Pall

3rd grade

Evan Patterson 

Alex Watts

Lily Laverty

Ainsley Stephens

Courtney Morrow

Marshall Medical Center South will host a reception for winners of the overall contest in April.  We hope some of these students will be winners for this competition!  Winning artwork will be hung in a special gallery in the Women's Center of MMCS.  Check back soon to see a list of MMCS Foundation winners!

Please enjoy this slideshow of students creating their art!

WWII German Soldier (reenactor) Visits G.A.T.E.

Randy Brandon, a German WWII Reenactor (and also Adyson's dad), visited 4th grade G.A.T.E. a few weeks ago.  He has quite a collection of WWII German war uniforms, weapons, and other items a soldier might have used.  Mr. Brandon shared a little about WWI and WWII.  He spoke about the 4 branches of service and about political parties.

As part of his hobby, Mr. Brandon has learned to speak German and even has a soldier's wallet for his reenactment adventures.  He is known as Randolph Brandt in his reenactments and holds the rank of Unteroffizier.  He brought different uniforms made from different types of fabrics that were indicative of the material used at different times and also the temperature of the places they were worn.  We learned that there were different types of camouflage with different patterns.

Probably one of the students' favorite things he brought was a machine gun (non-firing, of course!).  Other accessories he brought were binoculars, a canteen, a bread bag, map carrier, compass, and dark goggles.

To see more of the items Mr. Brandon brought, please watch this slideshow.  Thank you, Mr. Brandon, for sharing your Friday afternoon with 4th grade G.A.T.E. students. We ALL learned more about history and WWII that day!

Now showing...Every Child is an Artist !

Now showing....proudly announcing.....(drum roll, please)......the Every Child is an Artist collection of original art created by 3rd and 4th grade GATE students!  My students have been busily creating art to donate to the Albertville City Schools Foundation.  The Foundation supports teachers and students in our school system in a variety of ways:  funding teacher grants, providing needed supplies or necessities for students, etc.  We are so thankful for their leadership and guidance for all our schools!

As a service project, our students have shared their gifts and talents of art and creativity in 5 pieces of art that will be a part of the "Evening of Art and Appetizers" on March 6th.  This morning four of our AES Ambassadors presented our art to the Foundation.

After searching for ideas online and brainstorming what type of art and supplies the students wanted to use, we proudly present the following art:

Love is...

23.5 inches x 29.5 inches

Watercolor quilt type collage

4th grade GATE

Rainbow Sticks

24 inches x 28 inches framed

acrylic painted popsicle sticks

Created by 3rd and 4th graders

Abstract Awesomeness

3 individually framed pieces

12.5 inches x 27.5 inches

abstract watercolor strips collage

Created by 4th graders

REACH!

24 inches x 30 inches

canvas collage

watercolors and acrylics

Created by 4th graders

Every Child is an Artist

24 inches x 28 inches

framed watercolor quilt type collage

Created by 3rd graders

We hope that our artwork is a huge success at the art auction!  We are proud to be a part of this fundraiser supporting the Albertville City Schools Foundation who greatly supports all of our schools!  Please come and support this worthy cause!

An Evening of Art and Appetizers

March 6, 2014

Preview 6:00 p.m. Auction 7:00 p.m.

Big Spring Lake Golf Club

$25 per person/$250 Corporate table

Business Casual Attire

For ticket information, please call 

Kathy Henderson 256.894.5040

American Red Cross

Our 4th grade GATE students also created a piece of art to donate to the American Red Cross of Marshall County's "Touch of Red" event to be held on March 7, 2014.  Mrs. Tara Wilson, Special Education Coordinator for Albertville City Schools, is on the board of the Red Cross and will present our art for part of their silent auction.  Emma and Kayla presented this art to Mrs. Wilson earlier this week.  We hope the Red Cross loves our "Little Touch of Red in our Hearts" piece of art!

I am proud to be able to support worthy causes in Albertville and share the talents of my students while at the same time providing my students with the opportunity to look for ways that they can make a difference in our community.

Enjoy this slideshow of the creating of our art

School Board Appreciation Month

January was School Board Appreciation Month.  Mrs. Sheets enlisted the help of a few of our students to help create snow-themed trees of appreciation.  Our AES gift was presented by Mrs. Sheets at the board meeting last month.

We created one of our "Catching Snowflakes" pictures for each of the board members.  Little did we know those pictures were predicting the future!  Last week's snow was gorgeous!  I thought of the students and this art work as the huge snowflakes were falling!  Along with the Catching Snowflakes art, students created winter branches.  Each mini-tree was wintery white with snowflakes hanging from the branches.  Students wrote words of appreciation on the snowflakes.  Kind, generous, brave, splendid, capable, and dynamic were a few of the words written.  I agree with these students!  Our school board members spend countless hours discussing and making decisions that affect the daily lives of students and teachers in Albertville.  We appreciate their guidance in making our school system a safe, happy, outstanding place to work and learn!

Thank you, school board members!

Chinese Calligraphy

What a treat!  Today in GATE, 4th graders had the opportunity to learn about Chinese writing.  Mrs. Yu wore a beautiful Chinese dress with intricate metallic embroidery.  She looked beautiful!  A few years ago, Mrs. Yu brought me back a Chinese dress as a gift.  I decided to wear mine today, too!

Mrs. Yu showed the students how to properly hold the Chinese brush to create the characters.  She shared a video from Discovery Education that told about this history of Chinese calligraphy.   She brought ink, brushes, and papers with Chinese characters for the students to use for practice.

The neatest thing Mrs. Yu shared with us was her "chop."  This is a type of stamp that acts as an official signature on documents (like at a bank) or on art work.  To make the emblem, you press the chop into "1,000 year old ink." (Mrs. Yu has had hers for 26 years and it has not dried out!)  Then press the chop onto Chinese paper for the official mark.

The image above says, "Yu Lakur" with Mrs. Yu's initials at the top.  So neat!

My students and I learned many things today about Chinese calligraphy, the Chinese culture, and writing!   Mrs. Yu plans to come back again to answer questions that we previously sent her about China.  AES is so fortunate to have Mrs. Yu teaching our students about Chinese and opening their eyes, minds, and hearts to appreciate cultural similarities and differences.

Thank you, Mrs. Yu!   Mrs. Yu left us with two gorgeous banners that we will hang on either side of our door that say, "Happy Family" and "Smooth Sailing."  I like to think of our GATE class as a "Happy Family" and I wish us all "Smooth Sailing" for 2014!