week of Dec 19-20

 2nd- We've added the FOREGROUND details to our weather pictures. The kids had a chance to draw in Sharpie marker first and then carefully paint in the details. Some are farther than others. I'm not sure whether to allow another painting day or take them as is for our windsock when we get back from break.

 It's very interesting to see the range of artistic development in this age group- from figure drawing styles to carefulness in painting.

 I think we'll have a little writing activity next time for the kids to describe their pictures.

 3rd grade: Ms Didonato's class began the sound lesson with drawing high and low wavy lines to match played notes on my recorder. Ms O'Donnell's class completed making their kalimbas! There's one last detail and some playing and reflection time in store for them.

 4th grade: Ms. McGinley's class continued their maps. We thought about the purpose of maps and what features might be on a map. I only asked for 6 but they came up with over 20 things that might be found on a map. The Smartboard came in handy as we looked up images of lots of different maps. The students finished sketching and began crayon coloring the details on their maps. Eventually we'll use watercolor to paint the background water and land. Ms. Yancey's class completed their collaborative sculpture and began sketching their maps after a brief map brainstorm. They're catching up quickly.

 5th: Both classes have completed their 3 form templates and cut out their felt pieces t begin stitching. When we get back we'll have a short practice stitch piece and then begin stitching their forms. They've all had a chance to brainstorm what their forms might become, but it will be easier for them to visualize once their forms are constructed.

Hoping everyone has a relaxing Winter Break! See you in 2012!

week of 12/12/11

2nd grade: We started our paintings for the collaborative windsock. We talked about BACKGROUND and HORIZON line in a landscape painting. The kids chose colors for sky and ground based off of their sketches from the previous week about weather. Some students experimented a little with color mixing to get lighter and darker colors. Next week we'll add foreground details.

 3rd grade: Ms. O'Donnell's class continued with our sound lesson and wavelength drawings. I played some songs from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" for them to notice high sounds and low sounds to add lines to their wavelength drawings. Then we showed them the kalimba and compared the real one Ms. O'Donnell had brought in with the sample I had made. We compared which one had higher and lower sounds, and which one was louder or softer. With its hollow soundboard the real kalimba was much louder, but my sample kalimba got louder when I placed it on a desk to play it. We talked a little about why instruments might have decorations before we wrapped our soundboard block of wood with our wavelength drawings.

 Ms Didonato's class concluded their notan project successfully. Here are some of their finished projects:

 4th grade: Ms McGinley's class completed their erosion sculpture. We gathered around the pieces and worked out together how to place them- It was a very thoughtful discussion. Once they were arranged I invited the kids to imagine they were explorers coming to a new land and they had to send a map back to their governor to get permission and money to build a new settlement here.

 We spent some time sketching the landforms and brainstorming what their settlement would need. They were encouraged to add roads, transportation, cities, businesses, recreation, and a key for their map.

 Above is their relief sculpture hanging in the hallway, and below are some of their map sketches. It's a good thing they are a little hard to see- they were told to "draw like a feather" so lines would be easy to erase.

Ms Yancey's class is almost finished their group sculptures and should be ready to move onto the larger layout next week.

5th grade: Ms Albert's class worked on identifying geometric forms, the shapes of their faces and bases, and laying out patterns for creating their own forms. It was much easier than the previous attempt at this lesson with the other class the week before (I needed to provide more concrete examples and better directions)- I created models out of cardboard for them to handle as they identified the forms, and we worked in puzzle teams to get through 6 forms. Since Ms. Gelfand's class seemed not to get it the week before we redid the lesson with the new adaptations, and breezed through drawing our pattern templates.

Now both 5th grades are back in sync and ready to move forward with their sculpture project. We'll be cutting out templates and felt next week! 

week of December 5-9

It has been a very exciting week! 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grades have started new projects and 4th is almost finished the last one.
2nd grade:

 We're learning about weather! Types of weather, clouds, hot and cold, thermometers etc. I brought in a whole bunch of landscape art posters by Renoir, Hicks, and some others. The kids gathered on the carpet for some looking and talking about art together.

 We tried to figure out what kind of weather there was in the picture, what time of year it was, and what clues the artist gave us to show weather. We noticed colors were big clues, foliage or the lack thereof was another big clue, and many of the pictures showed very specific kinds of clouds in the sky. We thought about what we would wear if we were in each picture (bathing suits, sweaters, hats and scarves...) and even what sounds we might hear if we were in the picture (crunch crunch of dry leaves or snow, wind whooshing through trees, birds tweeting, water splashing...)

BRR... asterisk snow falling

 After looking at art we had a chance to sketch our own weather picture. The kids were encouraged to draw any kind of weather they wished, but to give clues about the temperature or time of year with lots of details.


Its a thunderstorm/hurricane over a whirlpool in the sea. The kayak is getting sucked in!

The sketches will help us get ideas for our weather fabric paintings which will become a collaborative windsock later on.

check out the umbrella and wind marks. Still want to play in the park?



a tornado chaser!



a very destructive tornado!

I think these kids could use a lesson on space in landscape pictures before we move on too far. I think they are just about ready for some space in art.

and finally a cheery rainbow after a storm.



3rd grade: Sorry, no pics. Ms. O'Donnell's class started our sound lesson. We noticed our voiceboxes vibrate when we talk. We stopped for a few moments to listen to the school and notice all the sounds going on around us- writing our notes in our sketchbooks. We talked a little about how all those sounds we heard were from things MOVING. To demonstrate sound waves, we circled up and did the wave- very slowly for low sounds and very quickly for high sounds. We then practiced drawing fast and slow wavy lines in our sketchbooks before moving to a large piece of white paper. The kids drew lines to match sounds I played on a recorder (shout out to Ms. Diberardinis the music teacher for letting me have a recorder on the spur of the moment!!!) (and apologies to Ms Didonato in the room next door)

Ms DiDonato's class is catching up on the color families notan project. The kids got to sketch their practice lines and got through the first steps of gluing the colored paper together. We'll finish up next week!

4th grade:

 As I came in on Tuesday morning, Ms McGinley had the kids start a reflection on how our sculpture models were showing erosion. After walking around the room and reading some responses it became obvious that they hadn't really made the connection yet. (Assessment really helps!) So we reviewed again what erosion was and how carving the layers of paper down was kind of like how wind, air, plants, and ice carve the earth away. Then we jumped right back into construction in teams.

 Ms. McGinley's class managed to complete all of their sculptures- next week I'll get them mounted on the blue background to show the river meandering around their mountains. The shapes are really cool. The kids worked together so well on this. Ms. Yancey's class is almost done as well- just need one more week to finish up I think. The working atmosphere has been a little loose for this project, but I thank the teachers for letting this unstructuredness happen and for jumping in to help with the hot-gluing. It's a credit to the 4th grade teachers' classroom management that the kids aren't getting into mischief during this process. Not to worry- we're getting back into some more structured activities Very soon!

5th grade: Again, sorry no pics! Ms Albert's class went through the geometric shapes-forms brainstorm and then worked in teams to look at and analyze sculpture posters. They did a great job working on this little cooperative learning activity. Some kids even read all of the extra info on the back of the posters and were able to give some awesome extra information. With Ms. Gelfand's class we tried to figure out the shapes and numbers of all the facets of the geometric forms we learned about the week before. This proved a bit difficult- pre-winter-break-itis? or bad explanations on my part? I think perhaps this groups needs more concrete applications to make sense of the abstract ideas.So a handout or a manipulative would have been a better approach. I also tried to get them to create a pattern for one of their forms based off of a 3 inch square template. But again- I think my directions were too confusing. It's a big class, so the opportunity for distraction is high and the chance to capture everyone's undivided attention is small. I need to come up with a different approach for this process. Ms Albert's class will benefit from my learning curve next week, and perhaps we'll just start over with the template idea next week.

Brainstorming for 3rd grade sound project

The 3rd grade will be learning about sound next and mentioned a desire to create a kalimba- otherwise known as a thumb piano. I had to do some research, but I finally figured out a way to get it done with some help from the internet. Many videos show how to craft more grown-up style kalimbas, but this video from Activity TV was very helpful. Here's my version:

I have to get materials, but it will involve a drawing as a first step to respond to high and low sounds and wavy lines. The Kalimba I made used some scrap wood for a block, thinner lattice for a bridge, bobby pin prongs straightened out, a bead, quick-dry tacky glue, and some paint. for mine I used tools like a miter box and saw, pliers, hammer, and clamps, but with some pre-cutting and adaptations I think I can cut down on necessary tools to make it more kid-friendly.
The real kalimbas are amazing. Check out the music in this video:


And then this is just breath-taking

Tuesday, November 29th with 4th, 5th, and 3rd grades

4th grade- making progress on our erosion group sculptures, but we'll need at least another day to get through attaching all our little pieces together. Sorry no pictures again- we've been so focused on our process.

5th grade- Ms Gelfand's class started our geometric forms lesson this week. We began by brainstorming the shapes-->forms the kids already knew. It was exciting to see them run for their math textbooks to use as a resource for this brainstorm as it shows they're learning to use resources available for problem-solving, an essential study skill the teachers have been encouraging all along. Sometimes it's not WHAT you know but HOW to find out that's important.

 We then talked about SCULPTURE as the art word for forms. I gave each group a poster containing some kind of sculpture from many different time periods, materials, and subject matter. In their notebooks the kids were to figure out the title, artist, material, and then figure out which geometric forms they could identify or envision within the sculptures.

 They did a great job helping each other find information and discuss the forms.

 There were some wonderful discussions going on about the artwork too. Afterward we shared out about each poster, and I offered some extra info about the artists or processes as we went.We also did some time elapse to figure out how old some of the sculptures were- which explained why some of them were by unknown artists. Art images are a great way to spark ideas and discussions in pretty much every subject matter!

 I finally got some color wheel/color fact family pictures! Ms Didonato's 3rd grade is a little bit behind, so we just started this project with them. We talked about primaries, secondaries, and how the colors mix together. Then we made our color fact family equations to remember part+part=whole and the turn around feature of addition and subtraction. They'll get to do the notan step next week, but perhaps a little compressed so we can get it done in 1 session. We'll see how it goes.

great displays

I totally love seeing the kids' artwork hanging around school! Ms. O'Donnell took our Notan/Color fact Families a step further by matting them on colored construction paper and mounting in the hallway outside her room with a title. The whole school will get to see them, since everybody walks right by there when going to art class!

 On Tuesday I brought Ms. Gelfand's class's sun bunting back to show off the final product.

 It was so long, it stretched around 3 sides of the room! Interestingly, this class chose mostly horizontal orientations for their stencil pictures, and with 38 kids/artworks they got one really long bunting!

 I also dropped Ms. Albert's class's finished project off on Tuesday and by the end of the day she had hers rigged up across the length of the room. This class chose mostly vertical orientations and has fewer students, but they still managed to get a pretty long finished piece. The colors and images look so bright!

Great job everybody!

Monday Nov 28th wrapping up projects with 3rd, 5th, and 2nd!

We welcomed some visitors today! Raye Cohen, Mary Dupree, and Catherine Cullen paid us a visit and joined our 3rd and 5th grade classes in the morning.

Patricia said the arrow was pointing to school (the ziggurat shape)

  Ms. O'Donnell's 3rd graders complete their notan/color fact family projects. We looked at some artwork by Piet Mondrian, Anni Albers, and Josef Albers to see how artists use the color families and to note the difference between abstract and realist artwork. Abstract art uses line, shape, and color and comes from our imaginations- it doesn't have to look like anything in real life.


Interesting organic shapes- oops! green side was supposed to be up in the center!

 We reviewed geometric and organic shapes and students had one last chance to sketch out a design before doing it on our good papers. They drew on the primary side of their color sandwich, cut out carefully, glued the negative space down onto the background, fit the puzzle pieces back together, and flipped them out of the square to reveal the other color.


organic and geometric. Flipping the shapes makes a new symmetrical shape!

 There were a lot of steps to this project, but the kids did really well. Ms. O'Donnell was doing a fabulous job making connections between math and art for us as we worked.

great shadow detail and text emphasis

 Ms Albert's class completed their sun banners adding marker details. They had an easier time with the text having already plotted out text on their mylar pieces before we switched to plain stencils.

They got to see what the finished product was like and used Ms. Gelfand's student work for inspiration. They had plenty of time for final reflection as well, which we shared. We thought and wrote about poster art, our artmaking process, and their favorite aspect of the project. Not all students took this reflection time seriously, though. I think kids in general aren't used to subjects being integrated and don't realize that the processes we use in learning all subjects are parallel- being able to write well help in all subjects, understanding and explaining a process is important in science and math, and even in art we need to write.



careful cutting!! Even simple shapes are tough when there's a lot of shapes, but check out the results below!

  In Ms. Drossner and Mr. Pitt's class we reviewed our color fact families and practiced simple vs difficult shapes to cut and geometric vs. organic shapes. I was very concerned that the scissor skills of this age group might not be up to this kind of project, but they did pretty well considering the challenge!

some of the skill range is evident and interesting

There were so many directions to follow! Most kids got it, but there were a few misglued pieces. However, despite some cutting or gluing challenges, this project looks impressive even with simple shapes. The third grade had more careful craftsmanship, but the 2nd graders had some pretty dynamic compositions.

Dion's had very interesting variety of shapes

After everyone finished gluing we had a little time in Ms Drossner's class to look at who had organic shapes and who had geometric shapes. Mr. Pitt's class ran out of time for reflection, unfortunately.

large organic shapes made a great composition too!

double symmetry!!

The compositions look fabulous hung up in the classroom! Each one is unique, and I never cease to be amazed at the creativity and variety that is possible in this seemingly step-by-step type of art. Flipping the shapes out of the puzzle results in big surprises. I'm very pleased at the color aspect of this project as well- there are lots of versions of notan, but I've never seen this color family version before.

3rd grade assessment

Since Ms. Didonato's class tallied up their picture values last week, I brought all of them home to doublecheck. For example, the picture above should equal $8.52 Here's the breakdown of how well they did:
12 students had correct values that matched their pictures
 5 students did not tally up to match their pictures exactly but had correct values that matched their tally marks
7 students had incorrect calculations, most of which were off by a coin.

November 15,21,22

I'm behind on posts after being sick all last week. I called out on Monday, but went in on Tuesday the 15th to make sure Tuesday classes didn't get too far behind (they already were because of Election day). I've been better at remembering to pull out the camera in some classes more than others...

2nd grade: 2 weeks ago we began our color wheel and color family equations. This past Monday we reviewed the color families, practiced drawing geometric and organic shapes using lines that started on an interior edge of a square, moved into the center space, and returned to the same edge. We figured out simple shapes versus complex shapes. Finally we selected our color families and stared the background of our notan pictures. Next week we'll draw out our final notan pictures and begin cutting and gluing everything.

 3rd grade: Last Tuesday, Ms. DiDonato's class printed their pattern coin pictures. They were very creative with their patterns, moreso than the previous class (did I do something different in explaining patterns to them? Or is it just a fluke of who is in each class?)

 This week we tallied them up to find out the value of our pictures. The most "expensive" one was over $8.00 worth of coin stamps- lots of quarters I guess. At the end of class we had our "art auction". I was able to explain the process a bit better and the kids made more savvy bids.

Ms. O'Donnell's class began the color wheel/color families lesson like the 2nd graders. We were able to get pretty far and started the backgrounds for the notan project. Now her class is on the same page as the 2nd graders, and a week ahead of the other 3rd grade.

4th grade: Last week we learned about scale and gridded over our contour rock drawings in order to enlarge them. The drawings were 6x6 inches and we transposed them to 12x12 inch squares of corrugated cardboard for a 1:2 ratio of scale. The largest shapes were cut out of brown, then traced onto green to make a smaller concentric shape, then the green shapes were traced onto orange for the smallest concentric shapes. We saved all our scraps of corrugated cardboard for use this week.

 Those scraps were used to cut into strips to coil into columns to start turning our concentric flat shapes into small relief sculptures.

 Ms. Yancey and Ms. McGinley helped man the glue guns once the kids had their coils ready. Once children had each of their individual pieces built up, they worked in teams of 2-3 to combine their individual sculptures on a new group sub-layer. I told the kids we were pretending to be wind and water carving away each layer of our paper/earth. Ms McGinley's class is just a little further ahead. I think it may take another 2-3 weeks to fully complete.

5th grade: During my day off sick I spent more time experimenting with the sunprinting process than recuperating. It turns out that the sun and temperature are too weak this time of year to let the sunprinting process work, so I decided we would shift to stenciling instead of sunprinting. Ms Gelfand's class completed their stencils on the 15th, but discovered that drenching their fabric meant lost detail. I was able to warn Ms. Albert's class about it before they started and they ended up with much crisper stencil images.

 We pinned paper stencils to cardboard, then used fabric paint to stencil. Each table shared one color (grumble, grumble!)

 Ms. Gelfand's class got to complete the project this Tuesday by adding details and text with sharpie marker. They look very bold now!

After adding the details we had some time for written reflections:

Next week Ms Albert's class will wrap up theirs and Ms. Gelfand's class will move on to our geometric forms project.