paint swirls, gold plated trees and sweet 6th graders???

Week Highlight:  Aside from my students doing a great job, I found some time (I'm not sure where I found it.  Probably under a stack of papers and at the end of my to-do list....oops) to make a small painting.  

 "Floating Layers", 6"x6", acrylic with copper wire.

Other highlights:  A young first grade girl, curly blonde hair, blue eyes dressed in a fantastic hot pink tulle skirt asked me, "How can you dress so nice and never get dirty?"  I respond, "Because I let you do all the work...;-)"

Also, they may not have reading done just right and still misspell 95% of their words BUT they can sing all the words to the whistle song by Flo Rida (did I spell that right?)

First Grade: first grade ghosts get a little color

Towards completing our self-portraits, we needed desperately to add some skin to our ghostly appearance. Not to mention our baldness.  Using Crayola Multicultural markers, the students had to explore and analyze what marker would best fit their own skin tone.  Through process of elimination and a little help from each other, they were pretty successful. In finishing of their portraits, they added their eye color, eyebrow and lips....and of course, their hair color.  Something great that I have noticed, is their understanding of 'ish'--kinda looking like what it is....

First/Second Bilingual:  Painting Bright, Painting Big, Painting Bold
There communities are really coming to life.  A little paint...well, a lot of paint, goes a long way!

 

Second Grade:  All in Swirly Gold

This week we started 'growing' our family trees with a very special paint....gold.... Honestly, these little things (like gold paint) brings imagination and enthusiasm to life.  We talked about how Gustav Klimt used gold in his paintings and how gold can be something special.  Students connected their own art-making of this golden tree to their creation of something special for their families.
Not that swirly gold trees are a difficult concept to draw, but google has just about everything.
Learn how to draw Klimt-ish trees: HERE and watch a video HERE 

Third Grade:  swirly paint, on swirly brushes make for dynamic painting

When we looked closely at Cezanne's paintings, we noticed that there were layers and layers of colors in one area.  These wonderful French artists, re-created that effect by painting with marbled paint.  It was really great to see these painters loosen up and appreciate the process of painting in this way.  This week we painted our walls, plates and jugs. 

Watch a Digital Painting: Here

Animated Story of Paul Cezanne

 Fourth Grade: Wrapping up Henri Matisse's Investigation

Bringing the lesson back full circle, students final challenge was demonstrating their investigative skills of observation, memorization, and recollection.  The students' focus was to look, very carefully, for 5 minutes at a peer's painting, assigned to them at random.  At the end of the five minutes, they were to describe in great detail the painting.  The emphasis here was for students to use their knowledge of the elements of art (line, color and shapes) to help them memorize what the painting looked like.

Fifth Grade:  Graffiti Creators
It is really wonderful to see my students really excited about what they are learning and doing.  It's also great when they ask for homework!!!  Which I gladly give them.  After a serious discussion on the rights and wrongs of graffiti, students delved right in to creating their own style.
Most graffiti-maker on-line sites will not work at school!  Which I understand but I don't.  Honestly, if you structure your lessons correctly, there never seems to be any problems with students following instruction without 'problems'. 

Sixth Grade: Sweet to be Me....similes, metaphors and just the right amount of chocolate
This week started a new lesson for my quirky sixth graders.  Following along with the concept of identity, each student will research, interpret, analyze and reflect on their choice of candy.  We started with looking at wonderful paintings of candy by artist Darren Mauer.  Not only are they wonderfully done but they miniature!  Amazing.  We compared and contrasted the various characteristics of about 20 paintings and then tried to understand how our choices in candy can tell us a little bit about our own personalities and characteristics.  We took a very brief candy personality test where at the end....the students were a bit surprised how accurate the descriptions were!  Of course, I rephrased some of the less appropriate descriptions;-)

The main objective was for the students to begin making observations of the composition of a piece of candy, using their 5 senses.  Their first experience consisted of taking a blind taste test with a sour patch kid.  Talking them through their experience, I encouraged them to focus on what happens when eating this candy.  Towards the end of the session, we discussed how words we use to describe characteristics of candy can become metaphors for some of the personality traits we have.  Their homework....to research, of course by testing, lots of candy and figure out what is your candy type.  The students are thrilled!

I have an entire powerpoint and packet to go along with the lesson:)  Contact me if you are interested.  The students will be creating contour line drawings, adding value and re-creating their candy in using their own style...and then writing a paragraph reflecting how they are like their candy.



 MILE: Spiders, Ghosts and our names
Last week we created these wonderfully crazy spiders.  We used laminating film for the 'paper' and glue to wiggle out a web.  Using model magic and some black Crayola marker, we marbled the clay, added some fun colored legs and, of course...googly eyes.  This week, we spelled out our names using the ASL alphabet and choosing our colors, and we created ghosts using the shipping popcorn stuff found in packages.  Super cool and super fun for the students.

 

     Check back next week for more updates!  Thanks for hanging out in the SMocKroom. 

xoxo, SMocK you.