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!

Third Grade Activities

Third graders are creating an abstract figurative sculpture based on Picasso's Three Musicians. The sculpture will double as a guitar and will allow us to experiment with pitch and calculate perimeter and area in the process.

Recent Projects

Second grade is constructing a community with large cardboard boxes. In the process, they are measuring, drawing simple floor plans, and learning about how materials are affected by climate. Next we will be making a weather vane and possibly taking the whole village outside on a nice day.

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!

Week of January 23rd

It was Spirit week at Comly! Everybody's trying hard to keep kids engaged as PSSA's approach. We had a lot of fun in Artslink this week too:
2nd grade:

To round up our weather project we created radial design compasses to show the cardinal directions. We'll use these when I bring our windsock back. The windsock is about halfway constructed and will be completed soon. We'll need to find a spot outside for it!

 Everyone started with the same foundation in various colors, but then they did their own radial symmetry design. It was great timing for this project as the kids just started doing lines of symmetry in math class.

 3rd Grade:
Ms O'Donnell and Ms DiDonato's classes began the money/shapes collage project. We started off trying to find the shapes to match a specific value, with each person at the table coming up with a different solution. The kids did a great job with this- many naturally started arranging the shapes in patterns and designs while they waited for everyone in the class to catch up.

 Then they had an opportunity to begin their own design, first planning it out, then gluing down the pieces. They had o use at least one of each color paper, use repetition or pattern, and try to use all the space on the paper. They were encouraged to show some symmetry as a starting point, but then add an asymmetrical element to make the composition more exciting.
Ms. Lex's class had an opportunity to complete their designs and then began tallying up the "value" of their pictures. Next time we'll do a "making change" activity.

 4th grade:
Ms Yancey and Ms. McGinley's classes began the lego/fractions project. They had plenty of time to build and play in response to my challenges- I realized I didn't give Mr Willis's class enough time for that the week before. So we began making something with 12 pieces and then tallying up the total of each color to show how to make a fraction- with the "color part" as the numerator and the "Lego total" as the denominator. Then they made a sculpture of 2 colors to show a 1/2 and 1/2 relationship. As we looked at the sculptures I wrote up the equivalent fractions on the board so we could see that 1/2 all the way up to 10/20 meant the same thing. Next, the kids tried a 3 color sculpture to show 1/3,1/3,1/3 relationships and again listed their equivalent fractions on the board. Finally we did the big lego sort-out to see which color had the largest fraction.

 Mr. Willis's class began with some extra time for building exploration and equivalent fractions which they missed out on before. I thought we were going to have a longer class period, so I did a demonstration on how to do our print project as well- but the kids didn't have time to try it out themselves this week. At least now all the 4th grade classes will be on the same schedule.


1/3 blue, 1/3 yellow, 1/3 white sculpture

 5th grade: Both 5th grade classes are continuing their geometric soft sculptures.

 Check out the great craftsmanship in careful stitching!

 Ms Gelfand's class is nearly finished since they've had more time (poor Ms. Albert's class has had 2 Monday holidays this month!). Several children have gotten to the assemble and embellish stage of their sculptures. In the 5th grade classes this week I handed the camera over to a select student or 2 for documentation. When downloading the photos I was surprised to find one student had set up a little backdrop to take some closeups- not realizing the fixed focal depth of the camera doesn't support closeups.... so here are a few inventive, yet fuzzy photos:

 That's a duck wearing a fez, complete with tassel. It was made with a cube, a cylinder, and a hexagonal prism.

 This is a rather adorable kitty with very expressive whiskers. It was made from a cube, a square pyramid, and a triangular pyramid.

 This will soon be  a turtle with a green cylindrical head and pink cube and blue square pyramid shell.

My photographer with her duck sculpture and awesome "crazy hat" for spirit week. I told the kids who were finished they could try to make a movie with their sculptures next week!

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?