Week of 3/20

I came on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, so missed a 3rd and 5th grade class, but everyone else has been busy, busy, busy!
2nd grade:

I finally finished the windsock! With the help of Jim from the building staff, we installed a pole for the windsock from a tree stump in the yard. Luckily we had just enough wind for it to blow around to our delight. We repeated our greetings to the cardinal directions. We also used our paper compasses to figure out which direction the wind was blowing from.

 Of course it was very exciting to come outside in the afternoon with the whole 2nd grade!

 Mr. Pitt's class above and Ms. Drossner's class below were curious to find their own picture on the windsock. I can't believe how big it turned out to be!!

 3rd grade classes began sketching their time story settings drawing "light as a feather". I'm not a big fan of prescriptive drawing directions, but so many kids crave knowing "how to draw" something, and they get frozen up with worry if they think they can't draw what they want. So I demonstrated some "tricks" for tables etc. It was wonderful to talk with kids about their ideas and offer suggestions for making their pictures more detailed.

4th:

 Two classes seem to have completed all their form building and have either started or are about to make sculptures. One child suggested that our Frank Stella art images reminded her of a playground. What a wonderful idea for our abstract sculptures- turn it into a crazy playground! Our third class started their building steps. The forms look great with their bright color edges and patterned faces. We learned some new vocabulary words, like "relief sculpture" (such as the Frank Stella piece we looked at), and "CONTRAST" (meaning what makes us see differences in art-color, texture, material, etc.)

5th grade: Ms Gelfand's class has moved into testing each other's projects. It was very interesting to hear them discuss the successes and failures of each project, and for each team to hear the feedback. We'll participate in the science fair next week with our drawing machine winners!

Artslink during PSSA week!

The schedule this week was all switched up in order to accommodate PSSA testing and still provide the kids with creative experiences during their stressful testing week. Instead of coming Mon-Wed, I came M/T/Th/Fri in the afternoons.
2nd grade:

 the 2nd grade teachers kindly switched their sessions to AM on Monday and Tuesday instead of their usual afternoon schedule. In Ms. Drossner and Mr. Pitt's classes we introduced the money collage project with counting up our class value, and practicing matching values with the colored paper. Ms Spangler's class tallied up the values of their pictures, arranged them in order of value from highest to lowest, and created a hallway display. We need to meet up for the next step in our plans for 2nd grade.

3rd grade:
Ms Didonato's class had a second day of puppet-making, with an added reinforcement of elapsed time measuring. Ms. Lex's class started their puppet-making and will have another chance at it. Unfortunately I missed meeting with Ms O'Donnell's class, but we'll catch up.

 4th grade:
Armed with colored duct tape this time, the 4th graders were successfully able to create their geometric paper sculptures! YES! I love how persistent the students have been through this project. Sculpture engages totally different thought processes, and they seemed thoroughly committed to making their sculptural forms.

 One boy taped his hexagonal prism pieces together, folded the squares in to make the creases, and brought the folded piece to me in delight saying "Look, it blooms!!!"

 The sticky duct tape worked far better, and I did not hear complaints of failures or frustration as I did last week. The only hard part was sharing a roll of tape amongst a table.

5th grade:
Ms Albert's class came down for their "build" day on their drawing machines. This class had mostly machines involving paint of some sort, which proved to be a messy session.

 The spiral art machine worked superbly!! But the ink pendulum was a bit sloppy. They discovered that watercolor ink flowed out too quickly- with calls out that it looked like someone bled all over the paper! They tried again with tempera, but weren't happy with the splats. I think they need an in-between viscosity.

 Oh the paint mess of certain groups! yikes! But we got it all cleaned up. Many of them just need to think about controlling or constraining their variables to make it more successful. One group didn't get to try their machine out yet, but they were incredibly focused on the engineering of their structure:

Ms. Gelfand's class tried out some variations to fix machines, and wrote up their directions. I think we're almost ready to swap and try out machines. It would be excellent if we had some experiments to put into the science fair night!

Week of March 5th

I think I forgot to post last week's activities.... But here we are this week, working very productively.

2nd grade: Mr Pitt and Ms Drossner's classes completed the shapes weaving project. They make interesting carpets when arranged all together. Although not everyone completely filled in their canvas, it was time to move on.

 It was very interesting to see how different skill levels became evident through this project. There are some big motor-skills differences among the age group, which goes to show that age is not always an ideal grouping factor.

 Ms Spangler's class has gotten farther ahead on the coin value collage. We had a practice day for the kids to match the color shapes to a specific value. For example both images below represent 82 cents, but equivalent coins make for different solutions.

 In 3rd grade we looked at some images and video that represent different "times". For example, Eadward Muybridge's photos show seconds of time. Andy Goldsworthy's ice sculptures only last a few hours. The Bayeux Tapestry represents months and possibly years worth of time and events. The kids were asked to sketch 4 pictures to represent 4 different lengths of time: seconds/minutes, hours, days/weeks,months/years. In Ms DiDonato's class we started the next step of making felt puppet characters for our time stories. Here are some of the amazing creations:

 Check out this horse rider!!!!!

 4th grade: Mr Willis' and Ms McGinley's classes have completed cutting out all their template shapes for the geometric forms project.

 Ms McGinley's class completed adding patterns and textures for each facet. Ms Yancey's class started construction BUT our science/art experiment failed- electrical tape is super colorful but not super sticky. There was a lot of material frustration, so we decided to stop and try it again next week with a new product. I feel badly, except for the fact that all the kids are doing science experiments right now, and it was an excellent opportunity to model scientific thinking and process.

5th grade: Ms Albert's class completed their drawing machine designs this week. Ms Gelfand's class got to make theirs. We worked in the auditorium, and each group constructed their machines and tried them out.

 The adjustable sponge stamping project was a very successful mark-maker, and created a beautiful painting. The kids tried out different colors and built up lots of marks.

The marker compass was a huge success. A dowel was inserted into a hole in a board and markers were attached with rubber bands and paper clips so they could spin around with the dowel.

The ink pendulum had an excellent design, and a surprising result- the thick viscosity of their paint made their marks more like drips than like drizzles.

The paint ball staircase made a wonderful mark- but it was rather messy!! Some adaptations need to be made to make it a more controlled experiment for less mess.

I'm especially excited and invigorated by the 5th grade mark-making experiments. It is a great exploration of the design process and a wonderful parallel to scientific experimentation. There was great opportunity for disaster in the "Build" stage, but the students are engaged and interested and maintaining their focus well. I only wish I could split myself into 8 so that I could work with each group.

New Artslink Displays

Thanks to Ms. Akif for letting me take over the Main Hall display case again. This time I have Shape stitcheries from Ms. Spangler's 2nd grade class and Geometric Form soft sculptures from the 5th grade classes.

 It's a very colorful and tactile display. I wanted to show these 2 projects together since they show the progression from 2D to 3D and are both using fiber art.

 The 5th graders sculptures are arranged by theme: Wild Animals, Birds, and Houses and Machines. They came up with such a variety of arrangements based off of the simple forms!

If I were to do this project again I might limit the color selection so that each person's forms were uniform in color. I think the mixed up colors made it harder for the kids to imagine what their sculptures could become.
Oh well. Next week I'd like to find a place for displaying the 4th grader's lego fraction mosaics and all of the 2nd grader's stitcheries.

Week of Feb 21

Our "week" was short due to the President's Day holiday, but still jam-packed with activity.

 2nd grade: I only saw Ms Spangler's class this week. We had a helpful sub and student teacher, and the kids got to complete their stitcheries. Most kids just needed to fill in the backgrounds.

 There was a very staggered completion rate in this project, so I brought in paper, tap, and thread for the students who finished before the others to extend their shapes into a shape garland of cut paper attached to a long thread. It was interesting to see that despite mys saying repetitively that their shapes should be large, many, many of the kids drew and cut out teeny tiny shapes. I feel like this project overall may have been a little too demanding developmentally. Not everyone had the motor skills needed to pull the pipe cleaner "threads" through all the way, and the idea of scale is not fully understood yet.

 3rd grade: Ms. Lex and Ms. Didonato's classes completed their abacus projects. We had time to do some more values and then papier mache the frames to make them stronger. .

 I hope the papier mache is sufficient to make these useful tools. If I were to do this again I might change the materials to be a bit sturdier. The kids really seemed to gain counting fluency as they used the abacus. The movement of the beads is like taking a tally, and creates a strong visual. When counting coins the biggest mistake is losing count!

4th grade: Mr Willis and Ms McGinley's classes completed their lego fractions. We practiced some more equivalent fractions, did a compare/contrast between a Chuck Close and a Sol Lewitt image, and finally arranged and glued down their pieces. Mr Willis' class wins for most prints! His class was able to fill an entire board with leftovers. I would really love to get some plexiglass and find a spot for this lego fraction mosaic to stay on a while for a long time!

 5th grade: Oh my goodness! This was a feat to prepare and manage, but we had our variables/drawing machine experiments day. I came up with 8 art experiments for the kids to try, and they wrote a response about each of the experiments afterward. We met in the auditorium and I set up each experiment around the stage as "centers" to cycle through. We only managed to get through 4 rotations, but there was a lot of great, focused activity happening. The fast pace and novelty of each station kept everyone engaged.

 The sand pendulum was extremely popular, even though it was not a permanent image.

 The expandable/collapsible reach gizmo was interesting, but didn't do exactly what I'd hoped. Despite a fixed rotation point there was still too much play and not enough limitation in the range of motion.

 Body Compass had an interesting build-up of mark. The kids placed their elbows on a dot and rotated from the elbow as they drew with a marker.

 Action painting was popular. It as good to limit it to one page per group to get a nice buildup of color and mark.

 Race Car printing was exciting, but the resulting print was not terribly impressive.

 Marker pendulums were fun- markers taped to yo-yos to create linear and bang-dot marks. It could have built up even more.

 Limited reach chalk drawing had chalk tied to a short length of string within a frame. We also had pencil tops making amazing spiral marks, but I missed a picture of it.

A special thank you this week to our student teachers and interns who were a crucial part of making this experiment day run smoothly. Now to do it again on Monday with the other class!!

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!