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 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!

Professional Development

We've had a professional development workshop this weekend. Here are some resources that relate to what we were working on:

http://www.pdesas.org/ the Pennsylvania Standards Aligned Systems is the one-stop-shop for our cross-curricular needs.

http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/explore.cfm the artists toolkit has several interactive activities to explore a few (but not all) of the elements and principles of art and design- this is a very kid-friendly site that could be shared in the classroom.

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/how-to/from-theory-to-practice/formal-visual-analysis.aspx  this webpage from the Kennedy Center has a  teacher-friendly explanation of all the E&P of A&D

Here are some resources about the artists we looked at:
http://diane-arbus-photography.com/ This is a portfolio of work by Diane Arbus- but note that not all images are appropriate for children.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/basquiat/street-to-studio/ fabulous kid-friendly interactive website by the Brooklyn museum about Jean-Michel Basquiat.


Here's a video of Gerhard Richter painting.
Here's one of Brice Marden comparing Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman:


Here is a website for finding videos on artists- http://www.artbabble.org/artist we'll have to see if it is accessible at school or not.

Here is a website for searching images: http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml however you need institutional remote access. To get this- visit the Wachovia Education Resource Center in the Perelman Building of the  Philadelphia Art museum.
Thanks for being great "Students" 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.

Allan McCollum link for shapes

http://www.allanmccollum.net/allanmcnyc/

I just watched an Art21 video about this artist, Allan McCollum. I've been searching for inspiration for the 5th graders sunprint project, and I want them to get the idea of what a stencil should be. This is from his Shapes project, where he has found a way to create millions of distinct shapes through combinations of a variety of corners or tops and bottoms. I think there's a way to incorporate some math ideas here- like how many multiple combinations from a specific set can be created...
I think perhaps there coul be a comparison between shapes and symbols too

Are states like these shapes or symbols? How is that different from symbols like these:

Schedules and inspiration

At our meeting this week we hashed out the schedule to get our projects started. I'll be coming in on Mondays and Tuesdays all day, and fit in 4 classes a day. Morning classes will be 1 hour and 25 minutes (this gives 5 mintes between classes) and afternoon classes will be 1 hour. Later in the season, perhaps we can switch up the 3rd and 4th grades to give Miss Yancey and Miss DiDonato's classes some more time. It was decided that 2nd grade would only have an hour to better match 2nd grade attention spans. The upcoming schedule of events has been posted in the sidebar at right for each grade.

 2nd grade will be working on balance and inverse addition/subtraction number facts. To start off we'll be taking inspiration from Alexander Calder's mobiles to create our own group kinetic sculpture. Later we will doa  printmaking project to explore positive and negative space and pattern and repetition.

3rd grade will be exploring money and value math skills. We will look at the features of coin design and create our own coin stamps to create value/repetition compositions. We'll calculate the resulting value of our prints and make borders to represent change back from a specified value. We'll also discuss the value of art compared to rarity and hold a mock art auction.

4th grade will be learning about rivers and the interaction of water and landforms. We will explore concentric lines to represent the path of least resistance in making river embroideries like the zen garden above. We will then work in groups to make larger erosion sculptures to show how water carves away land.

 5th grade will be exploring light, shadows, and elapsed time. We will begin with shadow paintings to show how colors interact and how the sun moves across the sky. We will then create sunprints with light sensitive cloth to represent our understanding of time.