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?

More kalimbas!

Kalimbas!

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! 

week of December 5-9

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...)

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.


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.

check out the umbrella and wind marks. Still want to play in the park?



a tornado chaser!



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.

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.

Brainstorming for 3rd grade sound project

The 3rd grade will be learning about sound next and mentioned a desire to create a kalimba- otherwise known as a thumb piano. I had to do some research, but I finally figured out a way to get it done with some help from the internet. Many videos show how to craft more grown-up style kalimbas, but this video from Activity TV was very helpful. Here's my version:

I have to get materials, but it will involve a drawing as a first step to respond to high and low sounds and wavy lines. The Kalimba I made used some scrap wood for a block, thinner lattice for a bridge, bobby pin prongs straightened out, a bead, quick-dry tacky glue, and some paint. for mine I used tools like a miter box and saw, pliers, hammer, and clamps, but with some pre-cutting and adaptations I think I can cut down on necessary tools to make it more kid-friendly.
The real kalimbas are amazing. Check out the music in this video:


And then this is just breath-taking