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...)
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| check out the umbrella and wind marks. Still want to play in the park? |
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| a tornado chaser! |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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