Zoom: 1st Grade Collaborative Book Making Project

ZOOOOOOOM!!!

In our 1st Grade General Studies class, the students are learning all about their place in the world starting with a close up look at their immediate surroundings. As the year progresses, they will gradually shift their perspective to see their greater community, city, state, country etc, and will end with a zoomed out view of earth from space. The 1st Grade team and I decided to have the students create a book about their journey that would be created over time, and could travel to all of our classrooms for subject specific projects. This is an incredible collaboration, and is off to a great start! 

We kicked this project off in the Studio by having each artist draw the inside of their houses. Artists were encouraged to include as much detail as possible, and to do their very best drawing. Next, artists were shown how to add on the outside of their house with collage. This piece will be heading down to the Judaic classroom next where students will add labels for each room in their house in Hebrew. 

Once we finished our collages, the entire class worked together as a team to build a beautiful mural that represents our local community. Students were free to create anything they could think of out of scrap paper to help bring our mural to life. The final piece is a great example of how a community can come together to build great things. Each artist will have a color copy of the mural added to their Zoom book.

Next, we are off to create a cityscape printmaking piece. Seattle is a beautiful city, and I am excited to see what our artists will make next! Stay tuned for updates.....

Modeling Clay Figures Star in Stop Motion Movie

I love collaborating with colleagues, and am always inspired by the lessons we create together. As a staff, we are all brainstorming ways to include technology into our curriculum. One of our Judaic teachers wanted to have his 4th Grade class film a short stop motion film depicting a story from the Parsha. After just a few minutes of shooting ideas back and forth, and playing with a couple of apps on an ipad, we decided we could create a great collaborative unit in both Judaics and Art. 

Our 4th Graders picked up on our enthusiasm, and have been loving this project. We decided to break the class up into 5 teams, and gave them each the charge to depict a scene from the Isaac, Jacob, and Esau story. Artists were given small cubes of modeling clay to knead and sculpt into the characters from the story. Each team was also given a shoe box to create a movie set for their chosen scene. The clay figures are impressive, and I am thrilled to watch this vision come to life. Stay tuned for updates....

Eric Carle's Hermit Crab Comes Alive in Kindergarten!

Our Kindergarten Team always does a great job introducing the class to the life and work of Eric Carle. This year, Eric Carle also came alive in the Library and in the Art Room. To kick off this amazing collaboration, our incredible Librarian constructed a life size Hermit Crab costume to wear while introducing Eric Carle's, A House for Hermit Crab. After enjoying the story, students were invited to create their own house for hermit crab by painting large pasta shells with tempera paint. Check out Ms. Todd's blog for a great recap of our collaboration from start to finish! Here's the link: http://lessordinarylibrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/feeling-little-hermit-crabby-part-2.html

On the class' next visit to the Studio, I demonstrated how to use modeling clay to create a crab for their new shells. (Note: the pasta shells were very fragile especially those that had been covered with a generous coat of paint. Next time, I will seal the shells with modge podge before handling). Artists had fun sculpting legs and claws, and carefully molded the clay to the inside of the pasta shell. Finally, googly eyes were added to bring their creatures to life. 

Inspired by Carle's style, the class then painted tissue paper with everything we could find! We also painted a piece of tagboard to serve as the background for our sea life scene. These pieces of tagboard will be cut and folded into open boxes that will be covered with coral, sea weed, and other sea life shapes from our tissue paper.

Kindergarten "Carle's" in action!

 We created the background first, and then glued the pre-cut flaps together to make a diorama. We added some dried flower petals on the sea floor as shells, rocks, etc. The hermit crabs were introduced to their incredible new sea homes, and put on display for all to enjoy. They are heading over to our local Tully's next week for the Kindergarten Artists' first community show of the year!

 

Faces for Idan

This project turned out to be a true highlight of our first trimester. A mother from our school community called to ask if there was anything our students could create to help lift the spirits of a little boy who was very sick. As I mentioned in an earlier post, our Kindergarten class generously donated a mural we had been building based on the book, Stripes of All Types. One of our 1st grade teachers had the great idea to create a face flip book for Idan to enjoy while recovering in bed. We all agreed it was a great idea, and this is what our Kindergarten and 1st Grade Artists put together!!

In Kindergarten, we took photos of the students making silly faces. I used a light box to outline their features on heavier white paper. After looking at some of Andy Warhol's pop art, artists set off to create colorful and interesting portraits. Artists used oil pastel to create their portraits, and added a watercolor wash to finish the background.

In 1st grade, artists used oil pastels and scrap paper to create silly masks. Artists were encouraged to be creative and cover the entire mask shape with design. Once artists were finished, we took picture of them wearing their masks to add to the book.

The final pieces were spliced, laminated, and then placed in a three ring binder. We hope these colorful, happy faces will bring Idan and his family many warm smiles.

I Feel BOLD Portraits

This was a fun project that I did with my 3rd Grade Artists. Our school's theme this year is "Going Bold". We decided to create "Going Bold" portraits for our annual Gala. Artists painted a colorful background for their portrait with watercolor paints, and had their pictures taking while pretending to scream. They then answered the following questions:

What is the BOLDEST thing you have ever done?
When do you feel BOLD?

Their answers were typed up, cut out, and glued down to create these unique pieces. At the time, some artists were finishing up their Alexander Calder animal sculptures. Since this was a challenging lesson, some artists decided to add their animals to their portraits as an example of BOLDLY taking on a challenge!

Fall Fruit Still Life Charcoal Drawings

Students love using the tools that professional artists use. I am always impressed by the work young artists create when given the opportunity to play with charcoal, smudge sticks, and kneaded erasers. These beautiful fall fruit drawings by my 4th Grade artists were no exception.

My first step was to call up our local Whole Foods. The staff is helpful, friendly, and very willing to help support local student art. They generously donated all the apples and pears for these still life set ups. Thank you, Whole Foods!!! I then had fun arranging the fruit on some overturned boxes covered in fabric. I also took pictures from each seat around the table just in case the set up toppled. Finally, I asked our Technology master to set up a document camera for the demonstration. I was teaching this lesson at my daughter's school the week before, and fell in love with their document camera. If you haven't used one yet, try it out! It makes demonstrations much more effective.

We started with a class discussion about the differences between a circle and a sphere. We then studied how artists use value to transform simple shapes into a 3D forms. I finished by demonstrating how to lightly sketch the still life. Drawing from life intimidates most everyone. Taking the time to do a thorough demonstration, and teaching students some drawing tricks like how to first put in the tops and bottoms of each piece of fruit really helps. I stopped the demo here, and let the class get to work on their sketches. Once most students were ready to move on to charcoal, I did another demonstration on how to look for shadows and highlights, and how to use the charcoal to transform their sketch into a 3 dimensional drawing. 

This is one of those lessons that really challenges students to stick with the process. When they do, they become more comfortable with the new medium, and really learn how to use it to create beautiful drawings.

Color Wheel Umbrellas

I found the inspiration for this project walking down the halls of my daughter's school. Since we are all very used to rainy days in Seattle, I thought this was a great way to reinforce the color wheel. I did this lesson with my 2nd Grade class to summarize a unit we had just completed about color. 

To prep for this lesson, I created a template of the umbrella shape, and traced it onto a piece of white tagboard for each artist. I also filled paint palettes with red, blue, yellow, and black tempera paint strategically so that there was space for the secondary colors. 

When the students arrived, we reviewed the color wheel, and talked about how overlapping can block our complete view of an object. I then demonstrated how to draw the portion of the person or animal (artist's choice) that was holding the umbrella. I broke the umbrella up into sections, and painted the primary colors first. I then chose students to help me figure how which secondary color went where, and how to mix the correct color. Each artist was instructed to add something to the drawing for each color of the umbrella. We imagined what might be flying around on a rainy, windy day! Finally, black tempera paint was used to create a windy, stormy background. These colorful paintings brightened up our gray winter days:)