And that means it's time to recap on all the wonderful things we have accomplished.
ART Studio News
Our art studio started the spring semester with large-format portraits of flowers. The students were inspired by beautiful paintings by the famous Georgia O’Keeffe’s. They used close-up photographs of flowers to create their own spring works following her technique.
The spring sky this year was full of unusual activity - many were able to observe the Northern Lights, incredible in our latitudes. And of course, how could we miss the solar eclipse? The Studio, impressed by what they saw, chose to work on space themes, using watercolors, oil pastels, and salt to draw extraterrestrial textures, which they used as a background for spaceships piloted by aliens.
Having come down to earth, we moved on to a clay project. The coil bowls were built by assembling spiral clay elements on paper forms creating intricate 3D designs that were later painted in many different styles.
Another remarkable project was "Amate" - a traditional Mexican painting that usually is done on a handcrafted paper made out of tree bark by using a special time consuming technique. To shorten the process we instead used, our long time favorite, brown paper bags to imitate the background for vibrant decorative designs of mystical folklore creatures. The results were quite impressive!
As soon as the weather started warming up, our young artists "went" to the beach, exploring the aquatic flora and fauna and what could be seen in the optical refraction of the waves. The result of such experiment was a giant mural across the entire studio depicting everything in the depths of the ocean and in shallow water!
The end of the school year in our art studio was marked by the AM Art Fair. Where paintings, clay works, jewelry and other handcrafted goods, and even crocheted toys made by our teachers, students, and their parents were available for purchase to anyone. We are grateful to all visitors of the fair and are glad they got to take home some masterpieces by the talented artists presented!
The exhibition of works by our young artists at Western Avenue's Gallery in Lowell recently ended. The exposition, shown since February, was a huge success. One of the works - a still life with a cake in the style of Wayne Thiebaud - was even purchased by visitors!Alma Mater Art studio was also represented at the “Constellation” festival in Maryland, by the works of our art students Valentina F and Dania K and were awarded the first and the second place prizes respectively!We are very proud! Congratulations! A job well done!
Russian Language Studio News
Who knows all the letters now? That our little ones, who have reached the end of the alphabet and are ready to tell the whole world about it. They have learned to read syllables and short words, can determine gender and number, and have mastered many tongue twisters. Kindergarten developed the technique of independent reading on short stories and were introduced to cursive writing. First-graders have already learned to write in cursive! They know different parts of speech, define the main words in a sentence, and easily distinguish synonyms from antonyms.
We were so impressed by the second-graders' project that we even decorated the walls of our studio, saying that the children were studying prepositions. They wrote such wonderful fairy tales about prepositions that you could make a cartoon! The children love learning from cartoons - for example, the story of "The Country of Unlearned Lessons". Although this is not about us! Our children are great, big and small. Especially the third-graders, who can now make words "big and small" themselves with the magic of suffixes. This, of course, is not the same magic as in the fairy tale by A. Pogorelsky "The Black Hen", which the children read, but the fairy tale inspired them to write their own stories. For example, new, unprecedented short stories with incredible content! Yes, that's right - our brilliant writers have written stories in which all the words begin with the same letter.
High school students finished reading stories by classic authors - Chekhov, Kuprin, Krapivin, Iskander, as well as larger works like "Eugene Onegin", "The Master and Margarita", and "The Idiot". They memorized poems from the Golden and Silver Ages.
The RKI class did not lag behind in their success. In class and at home, the children read fairy tales about animals that behave like people. As a result, everyone passed their tests with excellent marks and learned the power of "magic" words - polite ones, that is. So, please, appreciate their efforts!
By the way, regarding assessing their efforts, our tenth-graders Valentina F. and Sasha S. received the "Laureate of the Russian Language" award! Several of our high school students also won gold and silver at the Russian Language Olympiad!
Theatre Studio News
And where has our theatre been all this time, you ask? On a journey. Our senior theatre made a “Journey to Limpopo” at the beginning of spring, first showing a performance in part at the “Constellation” festival in Maryland, where they received many prizes for the performance “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”. The leading actresses Liza R. and Dania K. were awarded, and the performance also received a prize for the best costumes at the festival!
Then, encouraged by the applause, presented the full play on our “home” stage in Lexington. The junior theatre staged a funny performance about “The Kid Who Could Count to Ten” at the end of the theatre season.
By the way, you can congratulate us! We now have a new, bright, brilliant theatre festival! Our actors annually went to children's theatre festivals in Canada and other US states, and now guests come
to us too.
From May 31 to June 2, we held the Orange Summer festival at the RSM camp. We had groups from Maryland, Texas, and Canada come to visit us. And, of course, both of our theaters took part, showing two premiere performances - the junior theater staged the hilarious comedy Once Upon a Time by Hercules, and the senior guys took a risk and presented the experimental play Acceptance to the audience and jury, which the guys wrote, directed, and staged themselves. Both productions were a resounding success, as evidenced by the prizes for best direction, script, leading and supporting roles, as well as a prize for the best stage duet.
In a word, both the spring and the entire school year in general were very eventful for us.
We look forward to seeing you next school year!
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