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!

Week of Feb 6

 2nd graders are all working on learning polygons. All the classes are stitching their shapes using pipe cleaners through plastic canvas. When all filled in they make quite a fuzzy carpet-like surface.

 The shapes begin by stitching each line segment side, then filling in the shape. This project is revealing a range of fine motor skills among students, which tells me this creative skill is on the edge of a development level. Some students are really enjoying it- but some are learning how to work through a challenge.

 3rd graders are moving from our coin color collage and making change project into one final money-counting focused project.

After a compare/contrast exercise between a Roman Abacus made of metal and an Incan Quipu made of string (both ancient counting tools/calculators) students made their own abacus of wood and beads.

 We began by taping bamboo skewers onto a popsicle stick, then counting out a specific number of each color bead to represent coin values to slide onto each stick.

 Once the beads were added and the op edge of the frame was attached the kids worked on moving the beads around to show specific values. Next week we'll do a little more practice and then complete our abaci by adding papier mache onto the frame pieces to strengthen them and add color. While this is a more "make and take" style project, the kids are seeing how tools can be handmade, just like humans throughout history have made useful things. It was great to see them using the abacus for counting, and finding it so easy.

 4th graders have continued the lego printing fraction project. Ms. McGinley's class got to print. The other classes started coloring in their circles and squares.  

 They had to count up their total circles, and if possible determine what the 1/3 and 2/3 equivalent fractions would be. Then they counted up their rectangles and determined a 1/2 and 1/2 equivalent would be. They then used 4 different colors to fill in the circles and rectangles to represent the 1/3 and 1/2 color relationships.

 The interesting visual aspect was that 1/2 or 1/3 the number of shapes was not necessarily 1/2 or 1/3 the SPACE because of the different sizes of shapes.

 Thanks to Mr. Willis for taking some photos and sending them to me!

 In 5th grade, Ms Albert's class got most of their sculptures stuffed and are ready to move on o the final stage of embellishment.

 Getting to stuff the forms is an exciting step, as the forms suddenly spring into 3 dimensions.

 Many students chose to transform their sculptures into animals. (Thanks for sending some photos Ms Albert!) Here's a raccoon:

 And a chicken:

Ms. Gelfand and Ms McAffrey's class has completed their projects and had time for reflection on the forms they had used, why geometry is important for artists and sculptors, and what part of the project they enjoyed or disliked. Some students who had completed their work early were able to create some wonderful stop-motion animation videos, which I'll post later. I was especially impressed with their collaborative effort to create narrative and direct when left to their own devices. There was great disappointment when the battery power on the camera ran out! I'll see if Ms Albert's class will be able to contribute before I complete editing it to post here.

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 Jan 17

There were no classes on Monday due to MLK day, but this week was the beginning of our new schedule to accommodate an extra day and 3 new classes.

2nd grade: Ms Drossner and Mr Pitt's classes missed out this week, but I met Ms Spangler's class for the first time. They are a lively and quick-working group! They accomplished in one meeting what I expected to take 2 sessions!. We passed out their brand new books and started off with a compass drawing to show North/South East/West. We did a kinetic activity to help differentiate the 4 directions by standing and completing a different motion to each direction. We talked about radial designs in art and I walked them through the steps to create a collaged and drawn compass using different colored squares of paper, drawn radial designs, and an arrow attached with a  brad. I look forward to doing the lesson with the other classes next week.

3rd: Ms O'Donnell's class missed out on Monday, but I got to meet our new teacher, Ms Lex, and Ms Didonato's class in their new Wednesday slot. Ms Didonato's class completed their sound unit with some review, practice and performance time, and a chance to paint their bridges. Their patterns are so colorful! It was a real luxury to meet them first thing Wednesday morning with plenty of time to work! See the previous post to hear/view some performances!

 Ms Lex's class began with introductions. Most of the students were excite to get to be a part of Artslink again as they all had been in either of the 2 other 3rd grades before the classes were split up, and had met me before. We picked up with the money concept they had left off with, as the 3rd graders need lots more practice. I brought pre-cut colored paper shapes to represent each coin value. Green squares = $1, smaller blue squares= $0.25, long purple rectangles = $0.10, short yellow rectangles= $0.05, and small red squares = $0.01. We talked about patterns a little. The kids worked in teams to create arrangements of the papers to represent a specific value. or example $1.25 could be represented by a green and a blue square. They practiced with several values. Then they created their own pattern collage by arranging at least 1 of each shape onto a background paper. They were asked to make a geometric design that showed repetition and did not leave too much empty space. When they are complete we will find out their "value", and then make a second composition to represent "change" back from a specific value.

 4th: Ms McGinley and Ms Yancey's fully completed their coordinate grid map projects. All painting was completed and grids drawn. Then we played a coordinate grid game. We established values for each possible item on their maps. When I called a coordinate, the kids had to find it on their maps, and tally up the points for whatever was in that square. The table with the most points at the end got to be the first to hang up their pictures.

 In Ms McGinley's class we also had enough time for a reflective writing piece about what they liked or disliked about the project and what they learned. She had some students type up their responses to add to the pictures in the hallway!

On Wednesday I met Mr Willis'sclass for the first time. There were many familiar faces from last year's 3rd grade class! First I passed out their new books and asked the kids to write a bit about what they liked about math, science, and art as a way to ease into the artslink program. Then we started off our fractions project. I thought legos would be an interesting material to work with as I've recently found lots of lego"hacks", or ways to use a tool for alternative purposes. The kids were split into 5 groups by random numbering. Each group was given a basket of legos and asked to sort them by color, then tally up how many of each color they had. They then added up their total, and had to show what fraction of each color was in the basket. I thought they'd be able to reduce their fractions, but apparently that's a bit ahead of the curriculum, so Mr Willis asked them to use their calculator fractions function for the activity. Finally I asked each kid to pick out 12 legos, build something, and we found out who had 1/12, 1/6, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/2 colors in their little sculptures. Next time we'll begin making a printmaking matrix from the legos to stamp an edition. I had so much fun on Wednesday!

5th: Ms Gelfand's class continued sewing their geometric forms. Some students were able to begin stuffing them and combining them into the final sculptures. It was interesting to see that some students found that creative thinking step a challenge. Although we started our sculpture unit by identifying the underlying geometric forms in sculptures, the reverse process of turning the forms into more imaginative sculptures was not as concrete. I don't think they are quite used to the possibility of an open-ended result in an assignment. They need to work their imagination muscle.

what can you do with a cube and a cylinder?

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 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! 

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.