Artslink during PSSA week!

The schedule this week was all switched up in order to accommodate PSSA testing and still provide the kids with creative experiences during their stressful testing week. Instead of coming Mon-Wed, I came M/T/Th/Fri in the afternoons.
2nd grade:

 the 2nd grade teachers kindly switched their sessions to AM on Monday and Tuesday instead of their usual afternoon schedule. In Ms. Drossner and Mr. Pitt's classes we introduced the money collage project with counting up our class value, and practicing matching values with the colored paper. Ms Spangler's class tallied up the values of their pictures, arranged them in order of value from highest to lowest, and created a hallway display. We need to meet up for the next step in our plans for 2nd grade.

3rd grade:
Ms Didonato's class had a second day of puppet-making, with an added reinforcement of elapsed time measuring. Ms. Lex's class started their puppet-making and will have another chance at it. Unfortunately I missed meeting with Ms O'Donnell's class, but we'll catch up.

 4th grade:
Armed with colored duct tape this time, the 4th graders were successfully able to create their geometric paper sculptures! YES! I love how persistent the students have been through this project. Sculpture engages totally different thought processes, and they seemed thoroughly committed to making their sculptural forms.

 One boy taped his hexagonal prism pieces together, folded the squares in to make the creases, and brought the folded piece to me in delight saying "Look, it blooms!!!"

 The sticky duct tape worked far better, and I did not hear complaints of failures or frustration as I did last week. The only hard part was sharing a roll of tape amongst a table.

5th grade:
Ms Albert's class came down for their "build" day on their drawing machines. This class had mostly machines involving paint of some sort, which proved to be a messy session.

 The spiral art machine worked superbly!! But the ink pendulum was a bit sloppy. They discovered that watercolor ink flowed out too quickly- with calls out that it looked like someone bled all over the paper! They tried again with tempera, but weren't happy with the splats. I think they need an in-between viscosity.

 Oh the paint mess of certain groups! yikes! But we got it all cleaned up. Many of them just need to think about controlling or constraining their variables to make it more successful. One group didn't get to try their machine out yet, but they were incredibly focused on the engineering of their structure:

Ms. Gelfand's class tried out some variations to fix machines, and wrote up their directions. I think we're almost ready to swap and try out machines. It would be excellent if we had some experiments to put into the science fair night!

Week of March 5th

I think I forgot to post last week's activities.... But here we are this week, working very productively.

2nd grade: Mr Pitt and Ms Drossner's classes completed the shapes weaving project. They make interesting carpets when arranged all together. Although not everyone completely filled in their canvas, it was time to move on.

 It was very interesting to see how different skill levels became evident through this project. There are some big motor-skills differences among the age group, which goes to show that age is not always an ideal grouping factor.

 Ms Spangler's class has gotten farther ahead on the coin value collage. We had a practice day for the kids to match the color shapes to a specific value. For example both images below represent 82 cents, but equivalent coins make for different solutions.

 In 3rd grade we looked at some images and video that represent different "times". For example, Eadward Muybridge's photos show seconds of time. Andy Goldsworthy's ice sculptures only last a few hours. The Bayeux Tapestry represents months and possibly years worth of time and events. The kids were asked to sketch 4 pictures to represent 4 different lengths of time: seconds/minutes, hours, days/weeks,months/years. In Ms DiDonato's class we started the next step of making felt puppet characters for our time stories. Here are some of the amazing creations:

 Check out this horse rider!!!!!

 4th grade: Mr Willis' and Ms McGinley's classes have completed cutting out all their template shapes for the geometric forms project.

 Ms McGinley's class completed adding patterns and textures for each facet. Ms Yancey's class started construction BUT our science/art experiment failed- electrical tape is super colorful but not super sticky. There was a lot of material frustration, so we decided to stop and try it again next week with a new product. I feel badly, except for the fact that all the kids are doing science experiments right now, and it was an excellent opportunity to model scientific thinking and process.

5th grade: Ms Albert's class completed their drawing machine designs this week. Ms Gelfand's class got to make theirs. We worked in the auditorium, and each group constructed their machines and tried them out.

 The adjustable sponge stamping project was a very successful mark-maker, and created a beautiful painting. The kids tried out different colors and built up lots of marks.

The marker compass was a huge success. A dowel was inserted into a hole in a board and markers were attached with rubber bands and paper clips so they could spin around with the dowel.

The ink pendulum had an excellent design, and a surprising result- the thick viscosity of their paint made their marks more like drips than like drizzles.

The paint ball staircase made a wonderful mark- but it was rather messy!! Some adaptations need to be made to make it a more controlled experiment for less mess.

I'm especially excited and invigorated by the 5th grade mark-making experiments. It is a great exploration of the design process and a wonderful parallel to scientific experimentation. There was great opportunity for disaster in the "Build" stage, but the students are engaged and interested and maintaining their focus well. I only wish I could split myself into 8 so that I could work with each group.

Week of Jan 30

Due to Predictive testing this week Ms O'Donnell's 3rd grade, Ms McGinley's 4th grade, and Ms Gelfand and Ms McAffrey's 5th grade missed out on Artslink lessons, but we'll be back this coming week.
2nd Grade: Mr. Pitt and Ms Drossner's classes looked at shapes in art and practiced drawing different sided polygons in their journals. Ms Spangler's class began sketching a design and weaving a shape composition using pipe cleaners on gridded needlepoint canvas. Their finished product will be fuzzy like the carpet we looked at.

3rd grade: Ms Didonato and Ms Lex's classes finished up the shape collage project by counting up their picture totals and figuring out the "change" if I bought their picture for $5. We tried trading pictures to have partners double check. Below, Ms Didonato showed the class how to use the "bucket method" for counting change. ms Lex's class had enough time to make a small "change collage" on the back sides of their first collages. Next week we'll begin an abacus project.

 4th grade: Mr Willis and Ms Yancey's classes were able to do lego printmaking. They had to create a matrix of legos and use either stamping with an inkpad or rubbing with pencil/crayon/colored pencil to fill the square papers. Their goal was to make as many prints as possible in the time we had.

 I think the kids enjoyed the speed and exciting visual effect of doing a rubbing, but I enjoy the carefully stamped compositions more. Next week we'll do some coloring to change them and do some analysis for thinking about fractions.

5th grade: I was able to meet with Ms Albert's class after the testing period on Monday morning to allow them some extra sewing time on their geometric form sculptures. We'll see how far they get tomorrow, but I hope we'll be finished our sculptures in 1-2 weeks. Ms Gelfand's class should be finished this week.

Kudos to Ms Akif for sharing her art project connections in the previous post! I hope more of my teaching partners feel free to post on here!  I also want to acknowledge and thank my teaching partners for stepping up their co-teaching role following our professional development workshop last week! We have a fabulous team!

Week of January 23rd

It was Spirit week at Comly! Everybody's trying hard to keep kids engaged as PSSA's approach. We had a lot of fun in Artslink this week too:
2nd grade:

To round up our weather project we created radial design compasses to show the cardinal directions. We'll use these when I bring our windsock back. The windsock is about halfway constructed and will be completed soon. We'll need to find a spot outside for it!

 Everyone started with the same foundation in various colors, but then they did their own radial symmetry design. It was great timing for this project as the kids just started doing lines of symmetry in math class.

 3rd Grade:
Ms O'Donnell and Ms DiDonato's classes began the money/shapes collage project. We started off trying to find the shapes to match a specific value, with each person at the table coming up with a different solution. The kids did a great job with this- many naturally started arranging the shapes in patterns and designs while they waited for everyone in the class to catch up.

 Then they had an opportunity to begin their own design, first planning it out, then gluing down the pieces. They had o use at least one of each color paper, use repetition or pattern, and try to use all the space on the paper. They were encouraged to show some symmetry as a starting point, but then add an asymmetrical element to make the composition more exciting.
Ms. Lex's class had an opportunity to complete their designs and then began tallying up the "value" of their pictures. Next time we'll do a "making change" activity.

 4th grade:
Ms Yancey and Ms. McGinley's classes began the lego/fractions project. They had plenty of time to build and play in response to my challenges- I realized I didn't give Mr Willis's class enough time for that the week before. So we began making something with 12 pieces and then tallying up the total of each color to show how to make a fraction- with the "color part" as the numerator and the "Lego total" as the denominator. Then they made a sculpture of 2 colors to show a 1/2 and 1/2 relationship. As we looked at the sculptures I wrote up the equivalent fractions on the board so we could see that 1/2 all the way up to 10/20 meant the same thing. Next, the kids tried a 3 color sculpture to show 1/3,1/3,1/3 relationships and again listed their equivalent fractions on the board. Finally we did the big lego sort-out to see which color had the largest fraction.

 Mr. Willis's class began with some extra time for building exploration and equivalent fractions which they missed out on before. I thought we were going to have a longer class period, so I did a demonstration on how to do our print project as well- but the kids didn't have time to try it out themselves this week. At least now all the 4th grade classes will be on the same schedule.


1/3 blue, 1/3 yellow, 1/3 white sculpture

 5th grade: Both 5th grade classes are continuing their geometric soft sculptures.

 Check out the great craftsmanship in careful stitching!

 Ms Gelfand's class is nearly finished since they've had more time (poor Ms. Albert's class has had 2 Monday holidays this month!). Several children have gotten to the assemble and embellish stage of their sculptures. In the 5th grade classes this week I handed the camera over to a select student or 2 for documentation. When downloading the photos I was surprised to find one student had set up a little backdrop to take some closeups- not realizing the fixed focal depth of the camera doesn't support closeups.... so here are a few inventive, yet fuzzy photos:

 That's a duck wearing a fez, complete with tassel. It was made with a cube, a cylinder, and a hexagonal prism.

 This is a rather adorable kitty with very expressive whiskers. It was made from a cube, a square pyramid, and a triangular pyramid.

 This will soon be  a turtle with a green cylindrical head and pink cube and blue square pyramid shell.

My photographer with her duck sculpture and awesome "crazy hat" for spirit week. I told the kids who were finished they could try to make a movie with their sculptures next week!