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.

great displays

I totally love seeing the kids' artwork hanging around school! Ms. O'Donnell took our Notan/Color fact Families a step further by matting them on colored construction paper and mounting in the hallway outside her room with a title. The whole school will get to see them, since everybody walks right by there when going to art class!

 On Tuesday I brought Ms. Gelfand's class's sun bunting back to show off the final product.

 It was so long, it stretched around 3 sides of the room! Interestingly, this class chose mostly horizontal orientations for their stencil pictures, and with 38 kids/artworks they got one really long bunting!

 I also dropped Ms. Albert's class's finished project off on Tuesday and by the end of the day she had hers rigged up across the length of the room. This class chose mostly vertical orientations and has fewer students, but they still managed to get a pretty long finished piece. The colors and images look so bright!

Great job 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.

3rd grade assessment

Since Ms. Didonato's class tallied up their picture values last week, I brought all of them home to doublecheck. For example, the picture above should equal $8.52 Here's the breakdown of how well they did:
12 students had correct values that matched their pictures
 5 students did not tally up to match their pictures exactly but had correct values that matched their tally marks
7 students had incorrect calculations, most of which were off by a coin.

November 15,21,22

I'm behind on posts after being sick all last week. I called out on Monday, but went in on Tuesday the 15th to make sure Tuesday classes didn't get too far behind (they already were because of Election day). I've been better at remembering to pull out the camera in some classes more than others...

2nd grade: 2 weeks ago we began our color wheel and color family equations. This past Monday we reviewed the color families, practiced drawing geometric and organic shapes using lines that started on an interior edge of a square, moved into the center space, and returned to the same edge. We figured out simple shapes versus complex shapes. Finally we selected our color families and stared the background of our notan pictures. Next week we'll draw out our final notan pictures and begin cutting and gluing everything.

 3rd grade: Last Tuesday, Ms. DiDonato's class printed their pattern coin pictures. They were very creative with their patterns, moreso than the previous class (did I do something different in explaining patterns to them? Or is it just a fluke of who is in each class?)

 This week we tallied them up to find out the value of our pictures. The most "expensive" one was over $8.00 worth of coin stamps- lots of quarters I guess. At the end of class we had our "art auction". I was able to explain the process a bit better and the kids made more savvy bids.

Ms. O'Donnell's class began the color wheel/color families lesson like the 2nd graders. We were able to get pretty far and started the backgrounds for the notan project. Now her class is on the same page as the 2nd graders, and a week ahead of the other 3rd grade.

4th grade: Last week we learned about scale and gridded over our contour rock drawings in order to enlarge them. The drawings were 6x6 inches and we transposed them to 12x12 inch squares of corrugated cardboard for a 1:2 ratio of scale. The largest shapes were cut out of brown, then traced onto green to make a smaller concentric shape, then the green shapes were traced onto orange for the smallest concentric shapes. We saved all our scraps of corrugated cardboard for use this week.

 Those scraps were used to cut into strips to coil into columns to start turning our concentric flat shapes into small relief sculptures.

 Ms. Yancey and Ms. McGinley helped man the glue guns once the kids had their coils ready. Once children had each of their individual pieces built up, they worked in teams of 2-3 to combine their individual sculptures on a new group sub-layer. I told the kids we were pretending to be wind and water carving away each layer of our paper/earth. Ms McGinley's class is just a little further ahead. I think it may take another 2-3 weeks to fully complete.

5th grade: During my day off sick I spent more time experimenting with the sunprinting process than recuperating. It turns out that the sun and temperature are too weak this time of year to let the sunprinting process work, so I decided we would shift to stenciling instead of sunprinting. Ms Gelfand's class completed their stencils on the 15th, but discovered that drenching their fabric meant lost detail. I was able to warn Ms. Albert's class about it before they started and they ended up with much crisper stencil images.

 We pinned paper stencils to cardboard, then used fabric paint to stencil. Each table shared one color (grumble, grumble!)

 Ms. Gelfand's class got to complete the project this Tuesday by adding details and text with sharpie marker. They look very bold now!

After adding the details we had some time for written reflections:

Next week Ms Albert's class will wrap up theirs and Ms. Gelfand's class will move on to our geometric forms project.

Monday the 7th

Monday I met with Ms. O'Donnell's 3rd grade. We stamped out an exact amount on 2 more index cards, noting that there might be different coin combinations to get there. Then we arrange our coin value card deck in order from largest to smallest amount. I like how through the lesson Ms. O'Donnell gave numerous synonyms for the words we were using. Finally we had our art auction! We explained that in an auction one bids an amount one is willing to pay, and the bids should start small. if someone wants it more than you they can bid a higher amount, but the goal is to get it for the cheapest amount.

 I had made about 30 printouts of various Andy Warhol images and mounted them on blue card as our items to bid on. We had viewed Warhol's work at the beginning of the residency, and the kids love his bright pop art. The final picture, for the last kid to bid (no competition since everyone who had gotten a picture couldn't bid again) went for $0.03 whereas most of the other pictures were auctioned of for over a dollar!

 The 5th grade class reviewed stencils and posters, and I demonstrated how we would create our combination paper/mylar stencil for image and text. The kids had a chance to sketch out their words and images together to get their spelling and content approved. They glued their paper stencils onto the mylar and then used sharpie markers to write out the text. To inspire more aesthetic text I brought in handouts with a selection of font styles, which some students were excited to use.

 I think their stencils turned out wonderfully, and have interesting compositions of word and image.Let's just pray for a sunny day on Monday!!!!

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures during the 2nd grade class. However, we started our new project to reinforce number families. We made a color wheel with colored construction paper in our sketchbooks, an noticed that the primary colors make secondary colors for 3 major color families. Then we made color family stories just like the kids usually make number families. For example:

R+Y=O

Y+R=O

O-Y=R

O-R=Y

The kids drew boxes in their books for each color family set and colored in the appropriate boxes. I modeled the first 2 sets on the board, and most kids were able to figure out the 3rd set. Next week we'll start our color family notan project. 

Artwork Displays!

Huge kudos go to Jim from the building staff for hanging our 2nd grade mobiles in the hallway! He told me the learning support class kids love them so much, their teacher would like to do one too, so I'm going to give her my leftover supplies from the lesson to do it with them!

Thanks also go to our art teacher Ms Akif, for letting me put up a display in the case by the office- she even cleared it out for me, so it was ready for the afternoon when I came down to install, and lent me a stapler to be able to hang the kids' work. Here it is:

I'm so lucky to be at a school like Comly with such cooperative and supportive teachers and staff. You're the best!!!