Pip: Art With Korb — where the clay is wet, the pastels are dusty, and the first quarter is apparently sprinting toward the finish line whether we’re ready or not.
Mara: Frank Korb is checking in on all three grade levels this week, and we’ve got self-assessments, printmaking, and stop-motion films all landing at once. Let’s start with what’s actually happening in the studio right now.
Week 8: Three Grade Levels, One Very Full Week
Pip: The first quarter end is close, and every grade is either finishing something, starting something, or both simultaneously. The question is how you land three different projects at three different developmental moments without anyone losing a sheet of watercolor paper to a pastel-dusted hand.
Mara: On the 6th-grade side, the post sets up something genuinely new — their first ever self-assessment in the art studio, working through the standards of Art Making, Connecting, and Reflection. The framing is: “This might ALL be new to them so we are going to take it slow and work it together.”
Pip: That’s a real pedagogical choice — slowing down at the end of a quarter instead of rushing the finish. And pairing it with computer training and image insertion means the assessment itself is a skills exercise.
Mara: The photography unit has them working with Camp Snap cameras, then uploading and editing through Apple Photos. The goal isn’t just the image — vocabulary is called out explicitly as a year-long target, with one-point perspective as a concrete example of art language in action.
Pip: Meanwhile, 7th grade is navigating what might be a double first: soft pastels as a material and printmaking as a process, and the two are basically enemies in terms of cleanliness.
Mara: The post is direct about the tension: “NO FINGER BLENDING” is the rule for pastels, and then immediately the watercolor paper for printmaking “needs to be kept immaculately clean.” The soft pastel assignment connects to Wolf Kahn’s landscape work as a contemporary reference point.
Pip: So the medium teaches discipline by being inconvenient. Honestly, that tracks.
Mara: And 8th grade is closing the stop-motion film unit — modeling clay sets, collaboration, the whole production — and pivoting straight into handbuilding with slabs and wheel throwing on Skutt potter’s wheels. The claymation assignment emphasized open decision-making: group choice, story, set design, all student-driven.
Pip: Finishing one tactile medium and immediately picking up another. The hands never really get clean in this class, do they.
Mara: The through-line across all three grades is the same: wrapping one set of skills and stepping into the next, with the quarter mark as the natural hinge point.
Pip: Which means next week someone is going to be elbow-deep in clay. Let’s talk about what that looks like when the wheel starts spinning.
Mara: Self-assessment, printmaking, claymation, and wheel throwing — it’s a wide range of making for one week.
Pip: The quarter ends, the clay begins. We’ll see what comes off the wheel next time.
