Life Cycles, Time stories, and games

 2nd graders are learning about Life Cycles- especially of butterflies. While the 3rd and 4th grade classes were making our video, I met with 2nd grades in the artroom. We watched some animations of plants, butterflies, and birds moving through a life cycle and brainstormed lots of different species for the categories of plants, insects, and birds. Then we painted our backgrounds in a wet-into-wet technique to create a soft landscape appearance. The kids loved watching the paint bleed into their water-painted paper, and watching the yellow paint drip, "grow" into the blue, and transform into green.

We created our own "inchworm" stamps to stamp out the perimeter border of our picture. (and sang my inchworm song). Finally we drew our life cycle pictures on top in crayon, choosing to do an insect, bird, or plant through its life cycle. The kids were asked to make them detailed and colorful. Each group of students with similar subject matter projects had a chance to stand up to show off and compare their pictures for critique.

 Here and there are some random Kittens and Lizards.

3rd grade has returned to Time Stories. Ms Lex and Ms O'Donnell's classes are painting, while Ms Didonato's class finished constructing their "stage" and added their characters. Each time story was written out to show the start and end times to calculate the passage of time.

 4th and 5th grades started working on planning our playground game mural by analyzing their favorite games and designing their own game. I brought a large painted canvas labyrinth in for the students to walk as well:

After walking the labyrinth we talked about why games are important for humans and what games teach us. The labyrinth was a wonderful metaphor for the life cycle: it has a single path, beginning, middle, and end. If you get confused or lost you need to ask for help from someone more experienced. If someone ahead of you is going slowly you have to learn to be patient and wait your turn. Everyone has their own way of living and growing- not in the video below, one student danced his way through the labyrinth:

 Ms McGinley's class went out to the playground to help us select our site for the mural and measure the area so that the correct amount of paint could be purchased. We found a space with a 5x6 array of concrete squares each measuring 4x4 ft. The children calculated that each square was 16 sq ft making the total 480 sq ft.

Next week 4th grade is traveling to the John Heinz Nature refuge for some hiking and drawing to connect our mural with life cycles as well.

week of 3/26

2nd graders started learning about life cycles by viewing a few stop-motion growth videos like the one above.

3rd graders began coloring and painting their time story pictures for a crayon watercolor resist effect

4th graders completed their geometric form sculptures with added springs of paper and pipe cleaner and paper sculpture embellishments.

Some were more architectural, others animalistic.

some were just abstract.

5th graders had the honor of showing off their drawing machines to the crowd at the Comly Science night, Wednesday March 28th. We set up the spin art station, which was so successful we ran out of paper!

The spray bottle color mixing/op art station was very wet, but made beautiful art.

The marker pendulum was popular with the little kids.

We've been off from school for Spring break for a week now. When we get back there will be a change in the schedule so that Ann Akif (our art specialist) and I can work on a stop-motion animation project with the 3rd and 4th grades.

Week of Feb 21

Our "week" was short due to the President's Day holiday, but still jam-packed with activity.

 2nd grade: I only saw Ms Spangler's class this week. We had a helpful sub and student teacher, and the kids got to complete their stitcheries. Most kids just needed to fill in the backgrounds.

 There was a very staggered completion rate in this project, so I brought in paper, tap, and thread for the students who finished before the others to extend their shapes into a shape garland of cut paper attached to a long thread. It was interesting to see that despite mys saying repetitively that their shapes should be large, many, many of the kids drew and cut out teeny tiny shapes. I feel like this project overall may have been a little too demanding developmentally. Not everyone had the motor skills needed to pull the pipe cleaner "threads" through all the way, and the idea of scale is not fully understood yet.

 3rd grade: Ms. Lex and Ms. Didonato's classes completed their abacus projects. We had time to do some more values and then papier mache the frames to make them stronger. .

 I hope the papier mache is sufficient to make these useful tools. If I were to do this again I might change the materials to be a bit sturdier. The kids really seemed to gain counting fluency as they used the abacus. The movement of the beads is like taking a tally, and creates a strong visual. When counting coins the biggest mistake is losing count!

4th grade: Mr Willis and Ms McGinley's classes completed their lego fractions. We practiced some more equivalent fractions, did a compare/contrast between a Chuck Close and a Sol Lewitt image, and finally arranged and glued down their pieces. Mr Willis' class wins for most prints! His class was able to fill an entire board with leftovers. I would really love to get some plexiglass and find a spot for this lego fraction mosaic to stay on a while for a long time!

 5th grade: Oh my goodness! This was a feat to prepare and manage, but we had our variables/drawing machine experiments day. I came up with 8 art experiments for the kids to try, and they wrote a response about each of the experiments afterward. We met in the auditorium and I set up each experiment around the stage as "centers" to cycle through. We only managed to get through 4 rotations, but there was a lot of great, focused activity happening. The fast pace and novelty of each station kept everyone engaged.

 The sand pendulum was extremely popular, even though it was not a permanent image.

 The expandable/collapsible reach gizmo was interesting, but didn't do exactly what I'd hoped. Despite a fixed rotation point there was still too much play and not enough limitation in the range of motion.

 Body Compass had an interesting build-up of mark. The kids placed their elbows on a dot and rotated from the elbow as they drew with a marker.

 Action painting was popular. It as good to limit it to one page per group to get a nice buildup of color and mark.

 Race Car printing was exciting, but the resulting print was not terribly impressive.

 Marker pendulums were fun- markers taped to yo-yos to create linear and bang-dot marks. It could have built up even more.

 Limited reach chalk drawing had chalk tied to a short length of string within a frame. We also had pencil tops making amazing spiral marks, but I missed a picture of it.

A special thank you this week to our student teachers and interns who were a crucial part of making this experiment day run smoothly. Now to do it again on Monday with the other class!!

Week of February 13th

It was a slightly shortened week due to half day on Wednesday for report card conferences, so I only saw the Monday and Tuesday groups.
2nd grade: All three classes have continued to work on their shape stitcheries on plastic canvas. Many students have completed their shapes and some have begun filling in the background.

 The kids did much better this week at following their sketches to find the vertices. They also did a better job of pulling the pipe cleaners tight to prevent loopiness.

 A few students in Ms Spangler's class totally completed their projects and wrote a short reflection in their journals. When they are finished they really feel like fuzzy carpets.

 3rd: I only saw Ms O'Donnell's class this week. We did the abacus project with a slight supply difference. I cut board down for the frames instead of popsicle sticks for a wider base to tape onto, and we only used 10 yellow "nickel" beads instead of 20 since the other classes used up so many! Again, this project was a real hit- Ms. O'Donnell had the kids continue to do more practice with sliding the beads over to represent money values. Next week all 3 classes will be on the same page for papier mache over the frames.

 4th grade: Ms. McGinley's class got to do their coloring step to represent 1/3 and 2/3 in their circles and 1/2, 1/2 in their rectangles. Ms Yancey's class got to do the final step. We did a compare and contrast between Chuck Close and Sol Lewitt to see how the artists used the grid and squares.

 We did a short group fraction calculation to see how many of each color there was. Then the kids brought their squares back to a large board to arrange into a group mosaic. The kids liked the Chuck Close image better than the Sol Lewitt, so when arranging the blocks we tried to create gradations of color.

 Groups of kids came back to help glue everything down. Depending on how good the gluing was, I might go back through and try to get the blocks lined up a bit better.

 Since the entire class tried to do thirds in circles and halves in rectangles, the entire piece should have that as well- making it one huge equivalent fraction!.

 5th: On Monday, Ms Albert's class completed their geometric soft sculptures. Some kids were able to participate in the stop motion animation (see previous post). I hope to put a display up next week showing the 5th grade geometric forms alongside the 2nd grade geometric shapes.
On Tuesday we gathered both 5th grade classes in the auditorium to kickstart our next project. (Since there's no school on Monday this helped keep the classes at the same pace). We will be exploring the scientific concept of variables in experiments, combined with machines like pendulums and catapults. I showed a series of videos of pendulums and various other drawing machines to show how artists experiment with variables for art. We had some great compare/contrast opportunities and the kids were very engaged in watching the videos in this setting. The music teacher came down to help me set up the projector and microphone, and it was really great to have these videos on a giant screen with cinematic sound instead of on the smaller, quieter smartboards.

Next class we'll try out a few drawing machine experiments. I'm very excited about this project!

Weeks of January 3rd and 9-10

We're all back from Winter break and have jumped back into our projects. Last Tuesday I forgot to take pictures, Ms. McGinley and Ms. Yancey's classes continued their map-making, Ms Gelfand's 5th grade had a practice stitching day in preparation for soft sculpture sewing, and Ms. DiDonato's class began construction of their thumb pianos.
This week was my first day back with the Monday crew.
2nd grade: The kids had time to write about their weather pictures using some sentence starters: "In my picture it is...(weather description)", "You can tell because... (description of picture details)".Writing about art is an important art skill and literacy skill! After writing, some kids got to share their descriptions to the class. Then we gathered on the carpet to decide how to organize our pictures for our group wind sock. The kids in both classes agreed that it would be better to have them organized by weather than to have them mixed up randomly.
3rd grade: Ms. O'Donnell's class had a day to review and wrap up our sound unit. We made a diagram of the parts of our instruments, reviewed how sound starts with a vibration and ends up a our ears. We even found a video about the ear drum to see how it works. Then we practiced playing our kalimbas. we tried playing a rhythm while counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. Finally they got to make up their own  rhythm for a little performance in front of the class. I have a video of it I'll post later.
Ms DiDonato's class continued constructing their kalimbas- all that's left is painting the bridge and getting to play.

4th grade-:Both classes are nearly finished the map project. With Ms. McGinley's class we did a sketchbook exercise filling in a coordinate grid in a directed drawing. They completed painting their landforms in watercolor and drew a coordinate grid over their maps. Those that finished early made note in their books where each symbol in their key could be found on the grid.

Ms Yancey's class still has some painting to finish, but we'll be able to do the coordinate grid next week. Their maps are really fun and creative with imaginative place names and drawing styles.

5th grade: Ms Albert's class had their day of stitch practice to focus on craftsmanship. I'm sure it was worthwhile to spend a day on practice because today with Ms Gelfand's class the kids were able to confidently begin stitching their forms.Everyone got at least one finished, and many got 2 complete. They worked much faster than I expected! Hooray!

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!