There's a Dragon in my Art Room

Gray, silver, or white?

2012-02-11T17:04:00.018-05:00

I found these on Pinterest a while ago. I'd love my hair to be long enough to braid like this (my goal is to look like an aging hippie), and I'd love to have the guts to color my (gray? silver? white? colorless?) hair this way. Isn't it awesome? Anyhow, this is a post about hair color and the things kids say.

Four times in one day. I swear.
My first graders were working intently on self-portraits, using mirrors and drawing with big pencils. In each class (there are 3 first grade classes) someone started coloring in his hair with the pencil. I reminded him/her that "We will be adding color to the drawings in our next art class, and besides, coloring with that pencil makes your hair look gray. The only person with gray hair in this room is me." (Actually I think my hair is silvery, but I also insist my gray car is silver.)

And in each class, the student responded "But Mrs. Brown, your hair isn't gray; it's white!"
So that made three times.

The fourth time came later that day. A 6th grade boy stopped in for some help gluing together a chariot he'd made for a social studies project. I was asking him about the horse figurine he'd used, as it reminded me of one in a collection I had as a kid. It was a palomino like this:

He responded "I know why you like it so much, Mrs. B! It's tail is white, exactly like your hair!"
So that makes four.

There was a time when my hair looked like this, and everyone said it was black. It was dark, very dark brown, but it was NOT black.
Oops, actually that's Art Teacher Barbie's hair, though it's the same colo that mine was in the early '70's, when the pics below were taken. I French-braided Barbie's hair recently. I decided that the flight-attendant style pony tail had to go. I'm still working on improving her clothing though.

So here's my college era hippie-hair (excuse the photo quality; they are scans of tiny photos):

Opinions, please

2012-02-09T20:43:00.010-05:00

I introduced my 5th graders to Laurel Burch. They loved her work and were thrilled to be making papier-mache cats (those are my samples-in-progress and a Laurel Burch feline above).

They stuffed bags, they built body parts with cardboard tubes, newspaper, and cereal box cardboard; they taped and they taped some more; and they papier-mache'd with "dog drool". Now we are cutting holes in the bodies and inserting the tails and heads, hot-gluing them in place, and papier-mache-ing the seams.

Next steps will be a coat of gesso and then acrylic paints, and then embellishment.
So - here's where I need your opinions.

All along we've called these "Laurel Burch cats". We built the faces to mimic the faces of her fantastic felines. But now, the kids are saying:
"I'm going to paint mine to look JUST like my cat!"
"I'm going to paint mine with camouflage colors."
"I'm going to paint mine with Cougar colors." (our school colors, a hideous yellow-gold and green)
"My cat is going to be all black."
And so on......

All along I planned to have them paint them in rich colors, loaded with patterns, and never once did camouflage or Cougar colors or real cat colors ever ever cross my mind.

They LOVE the cats they have built. Should I take this away from them to make them paint them the way I WANT? Or should I let them make them truly their own? Opinions, please?

Kindergarten Kitties on Flying Carpets!

2012-02-08T23:16:00.004-05:00

It all started when my kindergartners were making paper bag puppets. They were having a hard time cutting and I realized they needed practice. I thought of this post by Art Project Girl.

I prepared some papers with zigzag and wavy lines, and the kids cut them in 2 colors and glued them on a piece of 9x12" construction paper. We decided they looked like magic carpets so we cut fringe on the ends.

But what should ride on the flying carpets? Somehow we decided on cats!

There's still a few to be completed, so when they are done I can move a few clouds around on the bulletin board to make room for them. Aren't they cute?

Jumping on the heart bandwagon!

2012-02-06T18:20:00.007-05:00

This fun (and messy) quickie lesson was intended to fill in the space between other stuff. It took two sessions, but turned out to be a lot tougher for my 2nd graders than I expected, though in the end everyone was successful and happy.

We began by choosing 2 colors of tissue paper, and cutting out hearts (this was a hard part, for sure!). We used our papier-mache paste ("art paste") to glue them down with a paintbrush.

Then everyone took one toilet paper tube and crunched it into a heart shape for printing. Thanks to the blogger who recommended this to me, though I could not find where or who that was. The kids had a hard time making the heart shape, so I went around the room and crunched for them. They LOVED stamping the hearts! I let them use both ends of the tube, and a few kids discovered they were also making heart stamps in their palms, because of the paint on both ends. They were SO excited about this!

We completed these today by selecting a construction paper mat for a border, and then using a thin Sharpie and other thin markers to write things we love, and to add more design and color. I was tickled at how many kids wrote "I love art" or "I love my art teacher". Some of their spelling is pretty funny, but I really like what they wrote. A lot of them wrote "I love myself"! I guess they have pretty strong self-images. Hmmm...

Who are you, really?

2012-02-05T20:25:00.007-05:00

Last night my husband & I watched the movie Catfish.
It's about a young man who forms an internet relationship with a beautiful young woman, her family, and her friends. But they may not be quite who they represent themselves to be. (Oops, was that a spoiler?) The movie is thought-provoking and we were really intrigued.

Have you ever wondered about your blogger friends? Who are they, really? Is that profile picture really you? Is the personality you portray the 'real you'?
These photos are the real me, recently. Since I'll be meeting some of you in NYC in March, there's no hiding behind photos of models. I'm just 5' tall, have silver hair that is getting longer and whiter every day, and I weigh about 15 pounds more than I'd like to. After 23 years, the excuse "maternity weight" doesn't work any more.

I have stupid feet so I can't wear high heels which means I'll either be wearing sneakers or comfy clogs. I wish I could sing good, or dance good, but I'm good at neither, though that doesn't necessarily stop me from trying. Actually I'm a bit of a klutz and tend to trip over my own stupid feet. I'm outspoken sometimes, shy other times; I'm opinionated but also have trouble making decisions. I procrastinate a lot, but in the end I always get stuff done on time, which is good because I'm a worrywart. I'm a nut about proofreading and get really annoyed when I see typos so hopefully you won't find them too often in this blog.

Incidentally, I was born in the year of the dragon (YEAH!) but in western astrology I'm a Libra. I suppose that's enough for now. If I meet you in NYC, will I be what you expect? Will YOU be what I expect? Or will we all be surprised? I'm looking forward to finding out.

What am I doing blogging on SuperBowl Sunday? My husband and I are not sports-watchers, but still the TV has been on all night. We instead ate an easy dinner and watched a combo of Cupcake Wars and Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl VIII - this was pretty funny, really.

There were piglet cheerleaders, a kitty half-time show, a bird tweeting from the sidelines, hamsters doing commentary from a blimp, puppy tailgaters, and then of course the puppies on the field running, tackling, and scoring touchdowns. All very adorable. And we watched a little something we had from Netflix - Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog - more silliness, with the adorable Nate Filion and Neil-Patrick Harris.

We recently watched the entire series Firefly, starring Filion, and totally loved it, so it was fun seeing him in this piece of lighthearted fluff.

Next time, I will post about teaching, or art, or some combo of the two. I promise!

Concluding the Gesso Saga

2012-02-03T23:25:00.006-05:00

Finally!! The Rheotech Gesso arrived today and is creamy textured, bright white, and has good coverage - just what I wanted. I'm totally sold on the product. Yippee!

But - just to end the saga properly, after 2 deliveries of solid rubberized Liquitex Gesso and one shipment containing the wrong material completely, they finally figured it out and sent me the Rheotech. But I had to laugh. When I opened the carton, it was a good thing the gesso containers had been sealed in a zip-enclosure plastic bag, because one of the containers did not have its cover on straight and it was leaking, as you can see in the photo. Luckily the stuff inside was OK to use, because I don't dare call School Specialty AGAIN!!!!

4th graders Get Surreal!

2012-02-02T23:27:00.005-05:00

These are the first completed surreal collages made by my 4th graders.
They saw the 1/2 hour video "Get Surreal", produced by the Salvador Dali Museum in Florida. It is available for FREE to educators and is a fun, engaging, and informative production. The kids love the flying mustache! I strongly recommend this video.

The video discusses these characteristics of Surrealism: Dislocation (putting things where they are not usually found), Juxtaposition (putting things next to each other that don't usually belong together), Metamorphosis (changing something into something else), and Symbolism.

Each student was given a 9"x 12" piece of black oaktag. I have a box full of landscape and other images from calendars that they used to create their background environment. The rule was that the black tagboard had to be covered completely, so they often had to piece together images for their background.

I have boxes of old magazines: National Geographic Traveler, Adirondack Life, Ranger Rick, and assorted home and ladies magazines. Students were each given a gallon size Ziploc bag, and all images they clipped were stored in the bag along with their oaktag. I did not put out glue until everyone had plenty of time to collect an assortment of images to use.

We discussed how SILLY is OK, but offensive is not. They were not allowed to use images of underwear, alcohol, or weapons, and could not put things together that would upset or offend someone. We discussed what is appropriate for school, and the kids were so funny, tearing out and discarding images, especially from the ladies magazines, that referenced stuff they thought was "inappropriate". They were quite zealous about this!

I've done this project several times before, and I thought this year's students selected the oddest assortment of images ever. There was so much great stuff there, and they just passed it by for strange little things. But anyhow - I'll show you more when the rest are done next week.

Cardboard Sculptures!

2012-02-02T22:29:00.005-05:00

Making these cardboard sculptures with my 1st graders is one of my favorite projects. The kids learn the words sculpture, and abstract, and we discuss how they will use an interesting arrangement of shapes and color to create their sculptures. I cut up the cardboard shipping boxes that my supplies come in, so this is a great recycling project.

I posted more about this project last year here.

The materials and processes are simple:
I cut 4"x 6" rectangles for the bases, and then hack the rest into assorted shapes, using an old 'workhorse' paper cutter. Then, glue is squeezed onto the corner of the base, and a pop stick is used as a 'glue paintbrush'. Students scoop the glue with the pop stick and spread it on the piece they plan to glue. They hold the piece in place and count to 10 to let the glue begin to take hold. We spent two sessions building and another 2 painting.

The boy who built the tall sculpture on the left below still needs to finish painting.

One REALLY IMPORTANT note: the glue should be Elmer's Glue-All, NOT Elmer's School Glue. They are not the same thing, and the School Glue will not hold and the kids will get frustrated. The Glue-All is MUCH stronger!

This year, a bunch of kids built out horizontally rather than building taller. Here's some examples:

Here's the projects all on display on top of the stacks in the elementary side of our school library - the kids were SO proud to see their work on display for the whole school to see.

Some kids finished painting early, so I gave them some paper for 'free choice' using the paint. Here's some examples of what they did:

Gesso Woes

2012-01-30T21:37:00.006-05:00

I've been having gesso problems. I use gesso with my elementary students to prime papier-mache projects. It blocks out the newspaper print, provides some additional strength to the structure, and also provides a nice painting surface.

I'd been using this stuff from Nasco for umpteen years:

But last spring, I opened up my container after not using it for a couple of months and what was left was all ORANGE (and didn't smell good either). So I called the company, and they replaced it. The new bucket was opened and used toward the end of the school year, but we didn't use it up. I went to use it this fall, and again... ORANGE. So I threw it out.

Because I was worried about a repeat of this problem, I ordered something else. Our district wants us to order from School Specialty, so I ordered this:

I opened it to prime my Laurel Burch papier-mache cat prototype, and it was disappointing. It would probably take 3 or 4 coats to cover the newspaper print, so it's not practical for our use. We need to get the priming done in one session. I can't think of a possible good use for this stuff.

So I ordered this:

In the catalog it was shown in a bucket, but it arrived in a bottle, like the Sax one in the previous photo. So I opened the bottle up and stuck my finger in, hoping to see its opacity. But what I found was a solid rubbery lump. EEK. The whole bottle!!! I called School Specialty and they sent me a replacement immediately. It came right away, and so I opened it immediately. Here's what it looked like after I cut the bottle in 1/2.

Yes, the top half of the bottle was another solid rubbery lump. The bottom half is like a thick rubbery spackle. It can be smeared onto a surface with my hands, but it won't spread with a brush at all; it is on it's way to being another rubbery lump.

I called yet again and they offered something different for replacement. But most of the gesso was way pricier than the stuff I'd ordered, so the only thing I could find at the cost I'd had approved was this: Rheotech Gesso. It's listed as 'economy' so I hope it will have some density and coverage. We shall see.

Do you use gesso at school? What kind do you prefer? Have you ever had spoilage problems?

Are you going to the NAEA convention?

2012-01-29T21:28:00.006-05:00

Decisions, decisions. I live in NY state, and to get to NYC from my home, it's an hour drive to Albany and then 2-1/2 hours by train. So it would not be too hard to get there, and I've NEVER been to a national convention. It sounds so exciting!!!! I love conferences!

But remember, I'm retiring in June. Can I justify the expenses of transportation, hotel, food, conference registration, and ticketed workshops, as well as using up my personal days at school, knowing that I pretty much already have the rest of the year planned out? (So I wouldn't really plan to use anything I learn at the conference.) Help me decide what to do!

Are you going? If you are, when do you plan to arrive in NY, and when are you returning home? Have you already registered? Reserved your room? Are you presenting a workshop? Have you been to a national conference before? What else can you share to help me decide?

Second graders grow mustaches!!

2012-01-27T23:18:00.010-05:00

It's Salvador Dali and his mustache!!

I'd love to take credit for this goofy & adorable idea, but I can't. I first saw this lesson posted by Anne at Use Your Coloured Pencils back in the fall. Her 5th and 6th grade students had created portraits of Dali and his famous mustache, but I did my version with my 2nd grade students.

We used a black oil pastel (with no pre-drawing with pencil). When done, the students cut the portraits out, glued them on a construction paper color of their choice, and made a mustache with a black pipe cleaner. I hot-glued the mustaches on when the students were ready. Last week, the second graders had practiced creating a variety of facial expressions using an oil pastel and the 'biggie' paints, so they were ready to draw Dali's expressive face!

But to 'get in the mood' we began by growing our own mustaches! I gave each student a 3"x 9" piece of black tag-board, and they quickly cut out crazy mustaches and taped them on, keeping them on while they worked. They were a real hit! Some of the students used their scraps to create funky eyebrows as well. Even the teaching assistant who comes to art with his 1:1 student made a twirly mustache to wear over his real (and much shorter) real mustache in art!

These mustaches below are samples of those that have been 'grown' by my second graders. Sorry the first batch is sideways. (Oh well; tilt your head or your computer. Thank you, blogger!)

Yes, it's me below (having a bad hair day but a good mustache day!) with two real characters.
By the way, since many of my readers have been 'pinning' stuff from my blog to their Pinterest boards, I'd prefer that you choose to pin just the artwork or the hideous photo of me, and not the photos of my sweet students. I realize I don't actually have the power to prevent you from pinning them, but I thought I'd at least make the request and hope you will respect my wishes. Thanks.

One of the second grade classes shows off their newly grown mustaches! Note that many of them are trying to bug out their eyes, Dali-style!

It was a LOT to get done in a 40 minute art class, and honestly both my 2nd grade classes ran overtime but we all got done. THANK YOU THANK YOU to my wonderful awesome spectacular fabulous 2nd grade teachers for their willingness to wait for their kiddos and to help with lining the kids up quickly for a photo. And another thanks to the very patient 4th grade teacher and her students who were waiting patiently for their art class time while we cleaned up the mustache trimmings all over the floor! I know elementary classroom teachers' prep time is precious, so I appreciate that this lovely teacher was cheerful and non-complaining.

And the minute the artwork went up in the hallway, people (kids AND adults) were smiling when they walked by! FUN, FUN!

Class pictures in Alien School!

2012-01-27T23:04:00.006-05:00

These pictures are a companion to my prior post about school pictures for aliens! We passed a paper around each class, and each student made a miniature of their alien picture. We gave their teachers new alien names, and I drew in the teacher for each class based on some student recommendations. Cute, huh?

My school district is named North Warren Central School, so we decided to name the school in this artwork by simply changing it to North Alien Central School.

Wear your best smile; it's school picture day!

2012-01-26T23:20:00.011-05:00

The inspiration for this fun lesson came directly from a series of posts by Mr. E. I used different materials, but otherwise did not deviate much from his lesson idea.

My 3rd graders had done portraits of each other in 1st grade, so were familiar with the concept of portraits. Last year my 3rd graders did self-portraits with mirrors, but I didn't have enough mirrors for this year's 3rd grades and frankly, they lack the attention span. So I did a different portrait lesson.

Just like Mr. E, we began this year's portrait lesson by looking at the Mona Lisa. My students were fascinated with her and with the life of Leonardo da Vinci. We discussed how formal portraits are posed, and we then talked about school picture day, and how mom makes you dress nicely and comb your hair! The photographer insists that everyone should smile. We discussed how we were creating school photos for students from another school - a school of aliens from other planets! It was so funny, in the space of 40 minutes to segue from Leonardo to silly aliens.

We used black Sharpies and construction paper crayons. Everyone used a second sheet of construction paper to make a frame for their portrait. Here are some samples of the student work.

The artists for these two funky aliens are twin boys, but their aliens are nothing alike.

These aliens put on their best dress-up shirts.

The girl aliens all combed their hair nicely.

The aliens all tried to smile, even if they were having a bad day.

But it's not easy to smile for pictures when you have 2 heads!

Folding your hands is hard when you have so many of them!

This alien looks straight out of the Toy Story movies.

And then there's always one kid who pushes the boundaries of the assignment. I'm not too happy about the message on his alien's shirt. Would mom really have let him go to school dressed like this on Picture Day?

And here's the whole batch of them all at once on 2 bulletin boards:

At the suggestion of one of the classroom teachers, there's a couple of pieces left to show you, hopefully tomorrow when they have been completed. Each 3rd grade class is creating a "class photo", with all the students in a group "photo" including their teacher. Nice idea from a supportive teacher.

I miss my NPR but at least I have Fleet Foxes

2012-01-26T20:58:00.006-05:00

It's been a couple of weeks that my car radio reception has been decidedly less than optimal. And now, every morning when I get on the Northway (the highway between home and school) my radio goes completely fuzzy and the only station I can get is a religious Christian radio station, which is seriously not my cup of tea. So the nice people at my auto dealer are ordering a part (an antenna amplifier?) and in another week I should be back listening to the friendly voices on North Country Public Radio. Yeah!

I've been bringing CD's to keep me company in the car (my drive is 1/2 hour) - the Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons are my latest favorites - but they aren't the friendly voices of my friends at NCPR. Anyhow, the Avett Brothers are great to sing along with but they weren't in my car tonight, and Mumford and Sons are pretty angry and not what I needed to keep myself calm in bad driving conditions.

I had left work in the dark, after it had started snowing and sleeting and I needed music that would keep me relaxed on my lonely highway, especially for the moments when big trucks would fly by me splattering my windshield with wet snow and freezing rain. My music of choice: The Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues. Lush, layered, and lovely, the Foxes engaged me and lifted my spririts all the way to my cozy house.

And some more...

2012-01-25T21:33:00.004-05:00

Only a couple left still to be finished. Thank goodness!

Cartouche, Cartouche!

2012-01-21T19:02:00.009-05:00

Another batch - just finished on Friday, the end of the marking period. And there's a handful of stragglers who are doing GORGEOUS (but slow) work that will be in my room during lunch and study hall time Monday/Tuesday to finish, so they can get graded before their grades go on the report cards Wednesday morning. My mom used to say about me: "slow as molasses in January, moving uphill..." so I guess I should be more understanding of these kids, but NO. I always meet my deadlines. They just don't seem to 'get' it.

Then there's the lovely 6th grade student, a girl who came with her family from Mexico 4 years ago not speaking a word of English. She's totally fluent now, as matter of fact no longer qualifies for any ESL time, a hard worker, really sweet, and I've got nothing bad to say about her. BUT. And it is a big BUT: she went with her family to Mexico for more than a MONTH and just got back this past week. With the Christmas vacation in the middle of her trip, she still missed at least 3 weeks of school. We had just begun the project when she left, and she came back as everyone was finishing and starting something new. The first day she was missing I thought she was out sick. On the second absence, I asked the other kids, "is she OK?" and they told me she was in Mexico.

And while I'm betting she told her homeroom teacher (who in our 6th grade setup is also her social studies, ELA, and science teacher) and I'm sure she told her math teacher (the only other 6th grade teacher; they switch for social studies and math and keep the homeroom teacher for all other academics), and while I'm sure they gave her work to do to keep up during her absence, it didn't occur to her to tell me she was going. And the homeroom teacher certainly didn't pass on the info to me. I don't know if the student told the music teacher, or the teacher of whatever other 'special' she has right now. (I see the 6th graders twice for 40 minutes each, in a 6 day cycle, as does the music teacher. But they also have Home and Careers, and Tech, and other stuff I can't recall, each daily for a 10 week cycle.)

So am I the only one of her teachers confused what to do about grades? I haven't heard a 'peep' about it from anyone else! When the girl came to art this past Monday, and still had to prepare the sheet rock for carving, I gave her a set of hieroglyphics and newsprint to take home and prepare her design so that she could immediately start carving in the next art class. She didn't do it. So she had art again on Friday and spent the class doing what she should have done at home. I explained how upset I was that she hadn't told me. I would/could have given her an alternate assignment to do in Mexico - she could have done a fabulous art journal. She said "I'll get this done". She now has her design drawn and transferred onto her sheet rock, and the marking period is officially over.

But really - she can come in during lunch on Monday and engrave the lines. She can put a coat of paint on it during study hall on Tuesday. But it will lack the relief carving of all of the other student work. Is it fair to give her a grade on something done quickly, even if it looks nice (which it will; she is meticulous)? OR conversely, is it fair to penalize her for a choice her parents made?
The grades are numerical grades that are entered electronically. I can give her an incomplete but she'd still have to make it up, and unfortunately she is generally not able to stay after school.
What would YOU do?

Here's a closeup of one of the works shown above:

Such a fun messy day

2012-01-19T21:18:00.006-05:00

A boy did this cute alien drawing after he had cleaned up. Today's 2nd graders did some of the cutest free choice ever in the last few minutes of their art time. Here's a couple more:

Yes, that's Batman and Robin!

But here's the fun mess. We had drawn faces with various expressions with oil pastels, and were painting over them with "the biggies".

These paints have been in my art room longer than I have. Seriously. But there's still good life left in them. Because they've been around so long, I totally don't worry about what happens to them. Go ahead! Stir one color into another and see what you get!! WOW!

The kids were so excited about color mixing - "Mrs. Brown! Come see the raspberry color I made!" "This color looks like a storm cloud!" "I made beautiful violet!" "Guess what ! Blue and Orange make BROWN! It looks like swampwater!" Gotta love it... Here's some works in progress -

The kids were fabulous, the room was a mess, everyone pitched in to wash the tables, and we all were happy. And one girl found an extra paint brush in her water bucket, and spent the whole art class painting with both - sometimes one in each hand, and sometimes like this:

When I collected the colored pop sticks that match the table colors, a couple of kids said the cutest things. (Let me start by explaining - I always say something like "Pickle Green" or "Jelly Bean Green", or "Rudolph's Nose Red" etc, and the kids always have suggestions for what the colors should be - today at the red table, one boy said "tongue red" (too funny!) but the best was at the green table. One of my sweetie-pie 2nd graders said "Greatest Art Teacher Green". Awww shucks!

So the rest of the day was just as good. The 4th graders saw the wacky Dali video "Get Surreal" and LOVED it, and came in at lunchtime to finish wampum belts and play Exquisite Corpse, the art game they learned about in the video. Then the 5th graders merrily stuffed plastic bags that will become the bodies of their Laurel Burch fantastic felines! Stay tuned... More great days to come!!!!!

An apology

2012-01-18T15:12:00.004-05:00

This post contains no photos or silly pictures. It is simply an apology to those of you I sometimes communicate with "off-blog" (via email), and a warning that problems can come out of nowhere.

My email was compromised today and you might have been sent a spam email from 'me' but it was not really me. It contained a link that was inappropriate, offensive, and nothing of the sort I would EVER send someone, even as a joke. I know this because some recipients opened it.

I have removed yesterday's blog post because I was concerned that there may have been some connection, since I was wondering about an email I had received that related to my blog. I am also in the process of changing passwords everywhere. (Now how will I remember them all??)

I guess this is the risk we run into when we communicate so openly with people who are otherwise strangers. The number of people who read this blog, for example, has grown exponentially since I signed up with pinterest, but I don't really want to close any accounts or turn away any readers. I guess I just need to toughen up to the realities of the world today.

Ironically, I am usually extremely careful with emails. I choose words carefully and don't send out silly video links or goofy websites. But sometimes things happen anyhow.

Thanks for reading,
Phyl

My apology

2012-01-17T17:04:00.008-05:00

(this is a painting I photographed at MoMA, NYC)
I've been a bad girl, and I apologize.

So - a few days back I posted two Egyptian projects, and then more recently I posted about giving credit for ideas you post, and then I realized that I was GUILTY of the crime myself. Somehow I neglected to mention the inspiration for these 2 projects!! So here's the best I can do:

The mummy case idea was in School Arts Magazine a LONG time ago, probably at least 10, maybe 20 years. So I doubt I could still locate it.

The idea of carving Sheetrock (drywall) came from 2 places - a "Friday After-Dark" hands-on workshop at my state conference also MANY years ago, at least 10 but probably more. Turned out the woman who presented the workshop also wrote about it in, again, School Arts. Somewhere in the bowels of my file cabinet it still exists. The article in the magazine was about carving geometric abstract designs. In the workshop we were at liberty to select our subject.

I have used the Sheetrock with my 6th graders for other lessons besides the cartouche one, but I have never done the abstract design lesson from the magazine. It just didn't interest me. This is just the 2nd time I've done the cartouche theme, and we don't carve sheet rock every year. (Last year between time spent making unique altered books and those fabulous "people in motion" sculptures, as well as a bunch of other stuff, we just didn't have the time for Sheetrock OR even for Egypt. OOPS.) Other years, I just didn't want to scrounge for Sheetrock. I don't like spending money when I can get someone's scraps for free!

Anyhoo - One year we carved lovely relief landscapes, and each was painted in a monochromatic scheme of the student's choice, with just one item in the landscape the complementary color. So, for example, after carving, the mountains, sky, everything might have been painted orange, and one tree might have been blue. They looked really cool. I don't have photos.

Another year, we carved African mask designs, with fabulous results. I love the strong symmetrical designs, the exaggeration, and stylization of African masks, as well as the patterning. They were a good theme for the Sheetrock. I don't have photos of these either.

As I said before, this was just the second time I used the cartouche as the carving theme. I think it suits the material well. I should mention though, if you are interested in trying this, IT IS MESSY. Carving the gypsum is easy; but you have to be very clear regarding cleanup expectations, just like if you are using plaster or plaster bandage.

When we have done the mummy cases (many many times), we take over the whole hallway, and our class sizes in my rural school are relatively small (I need to be honest about this). The kids work in pairs, some on my tables, some on my floor, and then I usually let maybe 3 groups go out in the hall to work. The hallway is a privilege they earn and that can easily be taken away. The kids love this project but it does take a long time. They tend to get into really intricate hieroglyphics (for example Chloe and Hannah might have their writing say "Here lies Queen Chlo-ah" the powerful, lover of cats, born 1999") As often as I say remind them to SIMPLIFY they just get carried away!

So please accept my apologies for leaving out the 'credit' for these lesson inspirations. Boy is my face red!!! Thanks for reading!

I've been contacted

2012-01-15T23:12:00.007-05:00

I was notified by Jessica of The Art of Education that I've been selected as a finalist for "Art Ed Blogger of the Year", along with some of you! Anyhow, if you want to vote (for me or for any of your other favorite blogs) you can vote HERE. The nice thing is that even though you can only vote once, you can vote for as many of the finalists as you want. I'm not begging for votes; I blog just because I enjoy it. I'm honored to be included, but honestly, the list includes a bunch of my favorite bloggers, so I'm not campaigning!

Meanwhile, I received an email from a reader who has communicated with me before and thus felt comfortable asking a sensitive question. She has noticed bloggers recently who post lessons that have been posted elsewhere but do not give credit to the source of the lesson. She asked "isn't this wrong?" Well, yeah, I think it is lousy manners, poor ethics. It's like handing in a term paper without listing all your sources, or copying a painting without mentioning that it is a copy and not an original composition. There are no governing set of rules for blogging. Still, proper etiquette would be to link back to your source or at least give credit somehow, don't you think?

So if you see yourself in the paragraph above, think about what's proper or appropriate please! Remember how YOU would feel if someone posted YOUR pet lesson without at least mentioning your name.
Do you agree?

6th grade Carved Cartouches

2012-01-14T00:28:00.006-05:00

Work-in-progress, sheet rock carving

Our 6th graders study ancient Egypt in social studies, and I've tried to coordinate an art project each year. I don't like to do the same thing every time (for 4 reasons: 1 - because I guess I get bored easily; 2 - because I get excited about new ideas; 3 - because the Libra in me makes it impossible for me to make up my mind; and 4 - because if a student repeats 6th grade he won't repeat the same project.)

Two of my favorite Egypt projects involve hieroglyphics. This year my students each carved a cartouche. The designs mostly represent either their name, their initials, a nickname, or a name of a family member. I blogged a lot about the process here last year. This year, we discovered that little pointed wooden sticks (scratch sticks) made excellent tools for carving deep lines, in addition to our other tools. And this year we did not draw directly on the Sheetrock. We drew on newsprint, and then used carbon paper to trace the design onto the Sheetrock. Much easier.

About 1/2 the kids are completely done, and today I loaded a bunch of them into the showcase by the library. The glass on it has this weird grid built into it, so the photos aren't great. Hopefully I'll remember to take more pics when the rest get done.

Some years, we've made giant mummy cases on brown Kraft paper. Including hieroglyphics is required. These pics are from a couple of years ago I think. They are outlined in black Sharpie, colored with oil pastels, and then we've added gold. I've used both gold paint and gold contact paper, mostly for hands and faces. The kids work in pairs, tracing the body of the smaller member of the pair, and working together to decide what the hieroglyphics will say.

Kindergarten snowpeople!

2012-01-12T22:39:00.006-05:00

Last week, kindergarteners tore and glued white tissue paper on blue paper, using starch, to create a blizzard. Yesterday they painted a snowperson over the tissue paper, using a brush for white and cotton swabs for the colored details. The one in the middle above was painted by a little girl who proudly told me her snowgirl had hair. Which is fine, but is that a giant button on it's lower snowball? Or is there something here that should worry me?

Here's all of them.

We finished them yesterday, and it snowed today!

A new batch of Wampum Belts!

2012-01-10T23:11:00.005-05:00

It's annual wampum belt time, and my 4th graders have been absolutely SAILING through this project. I posted last year with some specific instructions here.

This year we took a little time practicing knot tying before we began, and it definitely helped. Everyone has been weaving successfully this year; my only real challenges are the chronic absentees (parents, WHY do you need to take your kids on vacation just before or after a school vacation?) and my boy with CP. Last year I was challenged by how to get him through the papier-mache project. He's got very little use of his right hand, and is blind in one eye, and is all boy. He doesn't like to have special accommodations, but he is getting tangled on every row and I'm the only one who seems to be able to untangle him. His buddies are too busy on their own weavings to stop and help. I wish I could come up with a way to make it easier for him.

Here's some work-in-progress. The drawing on graph paper is the 1st step.

Everyone wants to tie them on their heads, but for some reason this is the only photo of the kids wearing them that isn't inserting sideways. The final photo is an extra belt made by my fastest worker. Most kids are finishing their first effort, but she already has 2 complete!

!

Confessions of a compulsive stapleflicker - and other random ramblings

2012-01-07T01:26:00.018-05:00

My name is Phyl and I'm a staple-flicker.

Thank goodness I have a good relationship with my custodial staff, because I have a very bad habit. I warn the kids to always leave their shoes on in my room, and not just because you never know when there will be a fire drill (which, frankly, we do NOT have in the winter anyhow). The truth is, there are probably staples on my floor, or in the hallway, near any of my bulletin boards that I change regularly. The kids all know I'm a staple flicker.

I hang something up; it's crooked; I pull the staples out and flick them aside while I straighten and re-staple the artwork. Usually I'm standing on a chair while I'm doing this, but that's no excuse. I don't pick them up when I'm standing on the floor either. Are there any other staple flickers out there among you, readers?

By the way - the photo at the top of the post is a couple of years old - it was a Lichtenstein-related project. We discussed "thought bubbles" and facial expressions and their challenge was to use both to get across a feeling without any words. The ones pictured are panic, fear, and boredom.

Now about PANIC...
I am having some serious panic of my own right now. I've been curled up with my lesson plan book, trying to sort out what comes next and everything I have planned for the year, and I realize I'm in deep doo-doo. I'm retiring in June, I have a LOT planned, and it cannot all get done. Not possible. What do I leave out? How do I decide? I want to do it all! And why do I keep bookmarking project ideas and pinning them on my Pinterest boards, when I will not get to do them anyhow?

Everyone will do something with dragons in time for our art show. Did you know 2012 is the
Year of the Dragon? And so was the year I was born! I'm a dragon!!!

We're also going to do some sort of big collaborative Chihuly thingy, also in time for the art show (in early May).

Anyhow, here's a taste of what I was hoping to get done between now and the end of the school year -

6th grade:

Complete our sheet rock cartouche project by the end of the marking period (Jan.20). You'll see them soon.
Tooling foil relief dragons. Has to happen.
Graph enlargement of seed packets, hoping to also make giant papier-mache vegetables to go along. I already have the seed packs but have my doubts we'll get it done. Do I do the big seed packs without the big veggies? Or skip them both?
Japanese Daruma - a really fun magical wishing toy, made with a plastic Easter egg and papier-mache.
Perspective words - an annual thing for grade 6; it may get left in the dust this year.
Plaster bandage - last year we made those "people in action" that took FOREVER to finish; this year maybe finger puppets - they are quicker.
Surreal lockers
Art room Pictionary

5th grade:

Papier-mache Laurel Burch cats - we're starting these next.
Drawing unit, focusing on contour line.
Some sort of perspective hallway if we have time. I'm afraid we won't.
Toothpaste batik (my former posts about this project are my #1 viewed blog posts, all the time). I'm planning for these to be dragons.
I was hoping to do a poster project - I have very specific poster guidelines. Not sure we'll get to it.

4th grade:

Currently making wampum belts.
Always do a coil pot project with air-dry clay.
Always do a cave art project that is a huge favorite (I've posted about this) so I don't want to skip it.
Planning to do a surreal collage that is always successful; will show the "Get Surreal" video.
Hoping to find time to do a Jackson Pollock mural painting.
Usually do an intro to perspective: "flying boxes".
Hoped to find the time to do a Grandma Moses project. Worried we won't fit it in.
Hoped to have time to make papier-mache garden gnomes. We would put them in the 6th grade oversized garden, if it happened. Don't know.
Planned to do posters with these guys too. Not going to happen.
And of course dragons. And Chihuly. I have plans.

3rd grade:

Papier-mache. I was planning on Kachina dolls, but it may be too much for this loopy group of kiddos. Maybe they'll make the garden gnomes.
Self-portraits? Not sure it will happen. We have some broken mirrors and not enough for everyone.
Laurel Burch project?
Dali project?
Klee project?
Chihuly /dragons/ etc
3-D buildings
more more more

2nd grade:

Teddy Bear chairs and lots more...

And then there's 1st grade and K's, and all the books I own but will not have time to use this year. And the boxes of air-dry clay to use in grades 1, 2, and 3. That's about enough, right?

So what do I do? The fun stuff? The curricular-ly sensible stuff? The crazy stuff? The stuff with guaranteed results? Do I be a responsible art teacher or go out in a blaze of wild color and large wacky projects? How do I balance it?

And how do I tell the kids they will have a new art teacher next year? HELP.

Zip, Zap, Zoom, Boom, Pop, Pow!

2012-01-06T22:42:00.009-05:00

This is a favorite lesson for my 2nd graders, focusing on the fun artist, Roy Lichtenstein! We look at a variety of his pop art images, and learn about his use of Ben-day dots, and primary colors. We even look at cartoons with a magnifying glass to see how the colors are made by using tiny dots, and we notice how everything is outlined in black.

This year, our little school has just two classes at the 2nd grade level, and I couldn't decide which of 2 versions of this lesson I wanted to do. So I did both!

One class created comic book style words,

and the other class imitated Lichtenstein's simple landscapes, with suns, sun rays, mountains or hills, and clouds.

The kids started with a simple pencil drawing, and then painted ONLY the places they wanted yellow. Brushes were washed, and students then painted with red, and then finally with blue, leaving white spaces as desired. Note: The kids painting words were instructed that the whole word should be the same color to be easy to read.

In our next class, students painted their Ben-day dots by stamping with the eraser of a new pencil (we used those awful cheap pencils that do not sharpen well!) Our final step was to outline everything with black. We used slightly watered down tempera, and painted with cotton swabs.

Here's the whole bunch of them, filling two bulletin boards in the hallway.

Feelin' fat, fat, FAT

2012-01-02T19:44:00.007-05:00

(This pic could be me after this vacation.)

Home alone tonight. Hubby drove son back to his home in Boston today and will spend the night and return home tomorrow. I couldn't go, because school starts tomorrow, so it's yet another time I'm not getting to see the apartment where my son lives, or the Koo Koo Cafe where he currently works, or meet the roommates I don't know. It was nice having him home. He killed me at Bananagrams last night, but I'll get him back next time....

On the flip side, it's just me and the cat home alone tonight, and she (cat) has been napping for hours. I don't have to feed anybody but kitty and me, and I don't have to worry about anyone laughing at me when I watch the season premiere of The Bachelor. So I'm OK that I didn't spend 4 or 5 hours in the car worrying about traffic.

So about the fat. It's time to stop eating, after a food-filled vacation, between the Christmas eve lobsters, the New Year's dinner out, the concert refreshments, and feeding my skinny son for a few days. I sent the leftover pie to Boston with the boys, and made muffins for their drive and didn't save any for me at home. I don't need to weigh myself, because I just KNOW, by the way clothes feel. I'm back to the gym, and eating healthy, and hopefully there won't be any more cupcakes at school for a while. My goal is that by the time June rolls around, I'll be able to wear my little red dress for my retirement dinner, and instead of being fat, fat, FAT, I'll be hot, hot HOT!!!

(OK, so THESE aren't MY red dresses, but they're cute anyhow, aren't they?)

Happy New Year, everyone, and let's make it a healthy happy one!

A mom post; not an art post!

2011-12-31T00:55:00.008-05:00

The boys in the band: Jeremy, Alex, Kevin, Ben, and Pat.
This is my son's former high school band, Echoes. After just 2 days of practice, they got together to put on a reunion concert tonight, to benefit the fundraising efforts of the girlfriend of the guitarist on the far left. She is raising $4000 for the Boys and Girls Club in order to qualify to run the Boston Marathon. Go, Steph!!!

Here's my Ben at the mic for Alaskan Blues. It's kind of a 'talking blues' since he is not a singer.

And this young man at the mic is multi-talented, playing keyboard, cello, and guitar, and also doing vocals for the band.
And the former Echoes vocalist and sax player at the mic in this photo joined the band tonight for their second set, after singing the national anthem at the hockey game. He is also a member of the a capella group the Dartmouth Aires, who you would have seen take second place if you watched the TV show The Sing-Off. So, along with other original Echoes songs, he additionally sang Pinball Wizard with the band (his group also performed that same song on The Sing-Off).

I read the news today, oh boy......

2011-12-29T14:15:00.006-05:00

James Rizzi 1950-2011

I was very saddened to read this morning that artist James Rizzi has died at the young age of 61. We have Rizzi-themed artwork hanging all around my school right now, and I'm sure my students will be shocked by the news. Here's a link to a nicely written obituary.

Goodbye, James, and lets hope that your heaven is filled with buildings that are smiling and happy, with symbols of peace and love and goodness everywhere. And maybe some beeping cars filled with laughing people, and congestion and bridges and skyscrapers to make you feel like you are in your beloved New York City. Rest in Peace, James.

Playing with Beads

2011-12-28T19:26:00.004-05:00

I made these last night!
So, I went to the mall for something yesterday, and through the window of a little gift store I saw the most spectacularly gorgeous earrings I'd ever seen. I went in for a closer look with hopes of finding them with a post-Christmas sale price. They were $26, not on sale. The tag said 'handmade'. Still, the price seemed quite high since they were just made with simple base-metal wire and glass beads, no real silver or expensive gemstones. Since I make jewelry, I could not justify spending that amount of money on buying a pair of earrings (especially right after Christmas and Chanukah). So I tried to memorize them. I started counting the beads and the loops of wire, and the salesclerk at the counter started giving me suspicious looks. So I left, and when I got outside the store I stood out there in the mall trying to doodle them from memory on a little pad in my purse. I felt like a crime scene artist.

Last night I set out to re-create the earrings, but boy were they a challenge. In the end, my pair is a very simplified version of what I saw in the store, and I think the first earring took me about 3 hours to figure out. The second one was done in about 1/3 of the time. But even though they are not the gorgeous paisley of the store earrings, I'm pretty pleased with them!
Here's another view of my creations.

And now for something completely different:

Meanwhile, we had the TV on, and needed to find something fun to watch while I worked with my beads and wire. Have you seen the movie Zombieland? I'm not usually the sort to watch zombie movies, and my husband is even less likely to, but this was a spoof, and had us laughing hysterically throughout the movie. Once you get past the initial zombie gore, it is really funny, with a great cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin (no, they are not zombies), and a fun celebrity cameo. Hey, if you can make it through the brutality of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zombieland will be a walk in the park! I highly recommend it.

My friend Paul's annual Christmas "art project"

2011-12-25T01:31:00.006-05:00

When I first met Paul, probably around 1980, he was doing "string art". You know, the stuff where you hammer in nails and wrap strings around to create designs. I tried not to pass judgment, because he was a good friend, but to me the "string art" was akin to painting on velvet. Shlock.
This is a little Christmas village viewed in a window.

But now cars line up in front of Paul's house every night during the winter holiday season, and both kids and adults get out to push buttons and make little displays light up, and figures move, and music play, and make donations that help the needy. These photos only show a tiny part of the whole display. You can push a button to make Santa's helicopter come to life on the roof, or view the work going on in Santa's Workshop, which is a little building with a viewing window. The HUGE tower pictured below has a changing color light show set to music every 15 minutes. Tonight when we drove over to visit, Paul was outside in the frigid temperatures (about 15 degrees) greeting kids and suggesting buttons for them to push and telling them to look up at a window in the house where suddenly an animatronic rock & roll Santa and his band began to play and sing. It's all pretty magical, even though we have no snow. And possibly a little insane, just like my dear old friend!!!

Yet another James Rizzi lesson

2011-12-24T00:38:00.004-05:00

My 3rd post of the night! Yee-ha!!! My camera's memory card was full so I'm cleaning it off.

3rd graders folded and painted these "Happy Rizzi Houses". I think the insides are pretty funny, filled with stairs, slides, and elevators to get between floors, and with hanging disco balls, people standing on their heads, and a bunch of other stuff. Too funny.......

I didn't get a photo of the whole bulletin board (memory card full) but at least I got these pics.

More 5th grade Woven Pouches

2011-12-23T22:20:00.004-05:00

Above, two flapless pouches, and a bunch of kids with their just-finished pouches.

See these three bags directly above? They are all made by boys, proving that real men do indeed wear pink!!!

My latest art project

2011-12-23T21:04:00.004-05:00

Here I am with the "Golden Latke" trophy that I built for my temple's first ever Latke-Fest. If you don't know what a latke is, it is a traditional food for Chanukah, a potato pancake fried in oil and usually served with either applesauce or sour cream. (Actually, the winning latke was serverd with a trio of sauces; chunky apple-cinnamon, raspberry, and a fabulous wasabi. YUM!)
I totally forgot to photograph the trophy, after spending HOURS in my classroom after school constructing it, but the Jewish World newspaper published a few photos of the Latke Fest including this one with me and my trophy.

You can't tell, but the latke is made with shredded paper and papier-mache paste. The frying pan is made from a dollar store tin plate and spatula, and the tilted pan has a puddle of "oil" that appears to be dripping over the edge. The oil is made from Pour-On, which is this amazing stuff that dries crystal clear and is self-leveling.

Whew!! 400 Followers!

2011-12-19T21:14:00.005-05:00

Whew. 400 followers?! WOW!

Where did you all come from?! Thanks, readers, for keeping me on my toes. But now I want to pick YOUR brains for an idea I'm working on.

I love making papier-mache cats and plan to make them (soon) with my 5th graders. We use a plastic grocery bag for the body, stuffed and taped to shape it. In the past I've used a simple ball of newspaper for the head, of course with ears added etc. Often we've used bottlecaps or styrofoam balls for goofy bugged-out eyes. BUT. This year, my last, I want to combine making papier-mache cats and introducing a favorite commercial artist: Laurel Burch.
I have been a HUGE fan of her work since the 70's, when I got my first pair of her enameled cat earrings. Nowadays you are more likely to see her work as a scarf or a purse. Her fantastic felines are just gorgeous, and we are going to make them 3-dimensional in papier-mache. But I'm trying to sort out some glitches. The faces have a very distinctive shape and I plan to use it. No goofy eyeballs this time!

Today I built a prototype with a shaped piece of cereal box cardboard over the newspaper ball, and it looks pretty good but I used up a LOT of tape just on the head and am worried I will use up all the tape in my room just building heads. If anyone has any other idea for a material to use for the head armature, please let me know.

5th graders weave pouches!

2011-12-17T23:43:00.015-05:00

Here are pouches made by Caleb, Sydney, and Caroline

The first woven pouches are complete and I couldn't wait for the rest to show them to you. Hopefully most of the others will be finished this week, before everyone leaves for vacation. The kids did great on this project and are VERY proud of their weavings.

Below is a pouch both open and closed to show you what it looks like.

This is the process: we began with a hunk of a cereal box (3"x8") as a loom, and marked off 1/4" intervals on the two 3" lengths. We cut down 1/2" at the marks to make notches, or "teeth".

The loom was warped by stringing the warp string up and back, going around each tab ("flossing the teeth"). Then the loom was folded in 1/2 to create the pouch, and a rubber band was put around it to secure the fold. Most kids opted to fold the looms unevenly, so that there would be a flap when complete. For extra security, a lot of the kids put a piece of tape over the teeth to keep the warp from slipping off before they started weaving.

The weaving is done in a circular fashion until the flap is reached, and then it is a more traditional back and forth weave. The students use forks or combs to 'beat' down the yarn so that the weave is tightly packed, getting as close as possible to the top of the warp.

To make sure the kids all understand the importance of OPPOSITES in weaving, we started the project with a 'HUMAN WEAVING'. I chose five kids to be the warp. Another student was selected to weave the weft, and he weaved rope in and out between the warp kids. Then I gave the weaver a second rope and told him to weave again. In one class, it was PERFECT. The boy weaved the 2nd rope the same as the first one, forgetting about opposites. Too funny. I told the warp to walk away and they did, leaving the rope on the floor! The boy realized his mistake, rounded up the warp kids, and re-weaved the 2nd rope, this time in the opposite position of the first rope. I instructed one of the students in the warp to go sit down, and suddenly she found the other 4 kids following her! They were all tied up together. The result: everyone, and I mean EVERYONE understood how important it was to make each strand OPPOSITE the prior one. This is especially important in a circular weave like this, because there is an even # of warp strands. (There are actually 11 warp strands, but when the loom is folded in 1/2 there becomes 22.) So each time a loop is completed, the weft yarn has to double up on an "under" or "over" in order to keep the weave opposite of the prior loop. If you don't understand my explanation here, just try it out and it will make sense. My kids did not have any problem with this, once I told them to check each time they turned the weaving over, and forget what they had done on the other side. "OH! I GET IT!!!" I can't tell you how many times I heard this :-)

When the weaving complete, the two ends of the warp string are knotted off, the warp strings are pulled off the teeth, and the loom is pulled out and discarded. Above is a whole class of work-in-progress, most nearing completion.

Finally, the students use needles or crochet hooks to work through all the yarn ends and hide them in the weave. NOTE: This is a good project to enforce that "ask three before you ask me" rule. The kids who finish first will be very good teachers to the ones moving a little more slowly.

Many students sew a button on the front and make a rope strap. (Making a rope is MUCH faster than braiding or kumihimo).

Don't know how to make a rope? It's easy:
Cut 2 or 3 strands of yarn, each more than twice as long as the desired rope. Then have two students each take an end and start twisting the yarn, as tight as possible. DON'T LET GO!! When it's nice and tight, fold it in 1/2 grabbing the two ends together and knotting them. Let the rest go, and run your hand down it to smooth it out. Voila! Twisted rope!! We use the loop on the folded end to pass through the weaving and pull the rest of the rope through. The other end needs to be either sewn or knotted through the weaving.

My assistant superintendent observed my class the day we did the human weaving and began the actual weaving. She was thrilled with how the lesson went, and loved that my students knew so much vocabulary - all the "W" words of course: weave, warp, weft (or woorf); and the others: loom, opposite, and beater. I hope who ever replaces me next year will keep the kids weaving annually.

Grade 4's Rizzi style Silly City!

2011-12-15T21:40:00.004-05:00

Our 4th grade James Rizzi mural is complete, and ready to hang!

I cut up a heap of foam core scraps, and students each made a building. When they were done, they used the extra pieces to either make a car, or an extra building, or some other odds and ends, such as the airplane, the sun, and the moon.

More Rizzi Cars!

2011-12-14T23:14:00.004-05:00

The 2nd grade "James Rizzi Cars" are finally all done, so here's a few more photos. Coming soon, I'll be posting a Rizzi-style city by grade 4, and some very happy Rizzi houses by grade 3.

The kids sure had fun learning about Mr. Rizzi and his fun artwork!

Art + Math = Magic!! It's a trihexaflexagon!

2011-12-11T21:54:00.012-05:00

This is a trihexaflexagon. It's got three sides that each change, or "rotate"once. This is one of the sides and its rotation. Confused?

One of the workshops that I taught at my recent state conference was a hands-on workshop where the participants each learned to make a trihexaflexagon, a tetratetraflexagon, and a kaleidocycle - all a bunch of fun combining art and math.

Last year I posted about these amazing constructions right here. If you want more specific details about the process of creating a flexagon, or how how I got started making them, please check out that post.

My students this year faced several "challenges" on this project. One was to incorporate their name, initials, or some other word on one segment. This was traced in mirror images around the hexagon using carbon paper, resulting in a kaleidoscopic design.

Another "challenge" was to design one side using a ruler to connect corners and then adding additional lines and curves as desired, "flexing" as they drew to make sure their design connected in all rotations.

A third "challenge" was a color challenge. Students needed to color one side of the flexagon using either complementary colors, triadic colors, or, as chosen by both the students below, an analagous color family.

Here's a couple more student examples.

Making these can be a starting point for many lessons. You can teach tessellation, M.C. Escher, and Islamic design, or you can use them to teach color, or symmetry, or many other concepts. And then there's the ruler and construction skills required in building them.

As you know, I'm retiring. But somehow I know this isn't the last time I'll be constructing a flexagon. I'm hooked!! Perhaps you will be, too?

Having fun with James Rizzi

2011-12-08T23:47:00.007-05:00

My 2nd graders are loving the work of James Rizzi, who I had never heard of until reading blogs last year, especially Kristyn's blog Her Dabbles, where she has numerous Rizzi posts. His work is so child-friendly and fun, and my 2nd graders are making silly cars using old CD for wheels. Most of them aren't quite done, but I couldn't resist giving you an advance peek.

The people in Rizzi's cars have nice big heads filling the windows, with big eyes. But honestly, my kiddos got so into making the cars, that I had trouble getting them to make their people larger (and their eyes larger too). But I love the cars they are making anyhow!

Erica's Alphabet Soup

2011-12-08T23:05:00.005-05:00

Last year, Erica, who blogs at Art Project Girl, organized a group share of sub lesson plans. Probably my favorite lesson in the bunch was hers, because it was simple and clear, did not require any special books, art prints, or strange materials, had educational value, and I thought the kids would enjoy it and be successful.

I decided to use this lesson before Thanksgiving when I was going to be out of school to attend my state conference. I introduced the project briefly to the kids in grade 3 & 4 as they were finishing another project, and they completed the work with the sub when I was out.

The basic instructions: use a Sharpie to write every letter of the alphabet. Each letter had to touch either another letter or the edge of the paper. Then use markers to fill the spaces that are formed with patterns and designs. We talked a bit about composition, and I gave kids permission to repeat letters if they had big empty spaces that they wanted to fill or if they had letters that weren't touching. This bulletin board below is the work of the 3rd graders. I didn't photograph the 4th grade work.

Thanks, Erica, for a great lesson!

Weaving with Recycled Paper

2011-12-08T22:41:00.006-05:00

Last year, while searching the internet, I came across this cool weaving project on a blog . The project uses recycled paper. I slightly changed it so it would work for me (and explained exactly what I did when I posted about it here). I liked the lesson so much, and it was so successful that I repeated it again this year, and here's our results.

I'm SO excited! Best gift. EVER.

2011-12-03T00:40:00.019-05:00

It doesn't get any better than this.

So, here's the story. At my recent state art teachers' conference, I had a wonderful Saturday night. It all began at the before-dinner cocktail reception, when we started chatting with fellow blogger Jen. She introduced me to a coworker/friend, and she and I hit it off when we discovered that for a couple of years, a LONG time ago (early 1970's), we were both students at SUNY New Paltz. New Paltz, in those days, was a little slice of hippie heaven, and for those of us who were there at that time, it was a unique experience, something we'll remember forever. A hint of that era - these were my education texts: Teaching as a Subversive Activity (I'm not kidding); Sexism in American Education: And Jill Came Tumbling After ; The Open Classroom; and, of course, Viktor Lowenfeld's Creative and Mental Growth. And some strange little art crit book. Anyhow, we had a lot to reminisce about and share about our time in New Paltz.

Anyhow, after cocktails we headed to the award banquet, and the conversation continued. As the awards started, I recalled a time, probably 8 or 9 years ago, when the annual gift for the Art Teacher of the Year was an Art Teacher Barbie. I always wanted one, but I knew this was an award I'd never get. I drooled whenever they handed out the big prize. You see, I grew up playing Barbies, but it seems my mom had ditched them all (vintage Barbies!) when I was in college. At one point I even checked them out in a store and decided that, 1) I shouldn't buy it for myself, and 2) they always were blonde. I even tried telling my husband and son that I wanted one for a gift, but I think they thought I was kidding. I WAS NOT.

The conversation continued into the party AFTER the banquet, and it was a fabulous fun night, filled with laughter and in particular, one kindred spirit of a new friend. I shared that I was retiring, but that I expected to continue to attend the conference since it is always a highlight of my year. My new friend said she wanted to send me a gift, and asked for my address.

And there it was, in the mail today! Not a new purchase, but something she has had, evidently for years, not just Art Teacher Barbie, but Barbie AND her sister Kelly, still in the box, apparently never opened, both brunette, like I was until my hair turned silver. And my new friend wants ME to have this!! I'm honored, and humbled. I mean, she's had this wonderful thing all these years, and she met me ONE NIGHT and sent me this TREASURE?? I'm and totally thrilled, and can't imagine a more wonderful gift.

By the way, I've looked online, and it is apparently a 2002 version of the doll. A more recent version has Barbie in a smock with an easel and a palette. MY Barbie (in the picture at the top of this post) comes with a stool and a drawing desk and some art materials, and is dressed a little strangely for our messy job (what, no apron?!!), but, heck, she'll be coming out of the box and I promise I will make her some new clothes. Seriously.

I'll post again, I promise, and will show you my Barbie's new look when it is complete.

Another late afternoon in the art room......

2011-12-02T22:30:00.010-05:00

After school today first I straightened up the yarn for grade 5 weavings. (Wait till you see what we're doing! They will be awesome!) Warm colors; cool colors; neutrals and earth tones; and variegated yarns. And by the way, yes, that's Lucy the dragon resting under the table, in her dragon-den. Don't put your hand down there - you never know what kind of mood she's in!

Then I hot glued this road and cut up a bunch of foam core for a 4th grade project. Big plans!

And I hot glued CD's on tagboard for a 2nd grade project. The kiddos are very excited.

And I cut hunks of sheet rock (Drywall) scraps for a 6th grade project, after discarding any pieces with fiberglass. If you want a hint what we'll be doing with it, check out this old post of mine. And by the way, contrary to what I said in that old post, this year the stuff with fiberglass had brown backing, and the good stuff was gray or brownish-gray.

And I took the wrappers off pieces of construction paper crayons. I'm going to try melting them into rainbow crayons this weekend, but I don't know if they melt like regular crayons. I got a great tip from Pinterest to help get off the wrappers. Basically, I soaked them in some warm water, and the wrappers slipped right off. When I'm done, I promise I'll let you know if they melt OK.

And I straightened up the collection boxes for cardboard rolls, cereal boxes, and also water bottles, all being saved for some current and upcoming projects.

And finally, friend C (whose classroom is no longer near mine) called to see if I was still in my room. It was Friday, and getting late (and also cold and dark outside) but she knew I'd probably still be there. So since I was there but had done enough work, she made the trek up to my room for a bit of 'puzzle therapy'. Here's what we're working on.
Heck, it was too late to go to the gym and exercise anyhow, and it was a fun treat to have a visit from C, since her classroom is no longer just down the hall. Then my lovely custodian stopped in, commented on the road I had glued and guessed what artist it related to (based on something she had seen hanging in my room) and helped with the puzzle for a moment. She admitted to us that she has taken the puzzle out from time to time after I've gone home, and put in a piece or two when she needed a brief break. (A word about this custodian - besides working in the school, she is also a talented quilter; AND she happens to only have one arm. Rock on, D, you're amazing!) Note the Peter Max bulletin board (below), which contains 4 completed puzzles since I have no Max posters. I bought them in the bargain tent at my favorite puzzle store: Piece-Time Puzzles in Northwood New Hampshire. About the bulletin board - I've had to explain to the students "No, Peter Max does not MAKE puzzles." It's a hard concept for them to understand.

Honey, I'll be home for dinner... eventually.

Wild and Wacky Weaving!

2011-11-30T23:17:00.002-05:00

So many "W" words! We Weave our Warp with a Weft or a Woof! Weaving is Wonderful!

Second graders folded paper in half, and used rulers to mark off 5 or 6 lines to cut. Then they "decorated" the warp with a pattern, gluing on colorful or patterned paper strips between the cuts in the paper. When the glue was dry, they chose ANOTHER pattern to weave with. Some kids repeated the same pattern, others chose something totally different. When weaving was complete, ends were glued down, and the weaving was glued to a larger sheet of construction paper. Many kids who finished quickly chose to decorate their weaving with black Sharpies and/or white colored pencils. Other quick finishers became teacher helpers, assisting kids who found the pattern of weaving to be a little challenging.

The Ultimate Texture Burger Sandwich

2011-11-30T22:54:00.004-05:00

I know a lot of you have done similar versions of this project, but it's so much fun I thought I'd post some pics of my students' interpretation. I don't think I already posted these, did I?

After brainstorming for REAL things that could go on sandwiches, the kids dug through a variety of materials (my room was a huge mess!!) and went to town. I was firm about just one rule - these to be BIG sandwiches but not SILLY sandwiches - in other words, no dirty socks, no earthworms, no rainbows, no monkeys... you get the idea. So everything on a sandwich represents a REAL food item. I think they did a great job and had so much fun digging through boxes of fabric, crepe paper, discarded counting cubes (great cheese!), scraps of colored foam, and so much more. I especially love the first sandwich, which is filled with only seafood related items, including a lobster claw, crabmeat, shrimp, seaweed, and even oyster crackers. And then she added a bowl of steaming hot soup!! I forgot to take pictures of all of them, but there were many other original pieces - for example, several kids created sushi rolls and eggrolls to put on their sandwiches.

Anyhow, I forgot to take a picture of the whole bulletin board, but I hope you enjoy the few pics I did remember to take! By the way - they are pretty big - 9" wide by 22" tall.

Reality TV, & imagining a new reality

2011-11-27T17:13:00.009-05:00

First, about reality TV:
IMAGINE THAT you actually know, not one, but TWO REAL PEOPLE on reality TV shows! Now you probably already know that I love Project Runway and Survivor, but this year my eye has been on two other reality shows - The Biggest Loser and The Sing-Off.

I have a son-in-law on Biggest Loser!!
Actually he's not on right now, as he got voted off a couple of weeks ago, but if you watch BL at all you would remember Joe (above). He'll be back on the show for the finale, coming in December. A week ago, he flew to NYC from his home in Tennessee with his wife (my stepdaughter) and their daughter (their first time in the Big Apple) to be on the Today Show. I was busy teaching and preparing for my conference, but my hubby was able to take the train to Manhattan and got to spend a day with them. How cool is that?! Joe looks fabulous and has changed his life. It may be a TV show, but what Biggest Loser does for people is REAL. Congratulations, Joe!!

As for The Sing-Off - the finale is tonight, and one of my son's good friends from his high school class is in the Dartmouth Aires. This group is one of the 3 finalists! If you watch this show regularly, you might have noticed a nice-looking blonde boy in the group (on the left in the photo above) - that's Alex. We're rooting for you, Alex! (*I should also mention, for those of you that follow college basketball, that another of my son's high school classmates was Jimmer Fredette, a BYU sensation that was a first-round draft pick for the NBA. What a graduating class!)

Ironically, my son also knew people in one of the other groups on The Sing-Off, the University of Rochester Yellowjackets. He just graduated from UR in May, and was pretty involved in the musical community, so he had two teams to root for on the show, thought the Yellowjackets did not last to the finals.

Now to imagining that whole new reality... IMAGINE THAT you've been teaching your whole adult life, and suddenly it is going to be over. This is not imagining; it is real (though it actually feels more surreal than real). It is official - after 35-1/2 years in the classroom, 26-1/2 of them in my current job, I will be hanging up my smock this June. With a 30 mile commute, a contract expiring in June, new education legislation in NY that makes me crazy, and a son that is (somewhat) financially independent, the time is right for me to retire.

I'll be packing up my belongings and moving on. By the way, the heads (above) and the IMAGINE THAT signs are disassembled banquet centerpieces from my recent state art teachers conference. They were being boxed up for storage or transport as I was photographing them, and I feel like the expression on the face of the Vermeer gal below could be mine, wondering what happens next.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing or where I'm headed, though you can bet I'll still be involved with art and education and kids somehow. And I expect I'll still be blogging. But beyond that, I've tossed around a few ideas, and had an unexpected idea come my way, but the truth is, I DON'T KNOW YET. It's a little frightening, as I've always been a planner, and I don't really feel old enough to retire, but my goal is to make it exciting. I suppose to begin I'll spend more time here:
(That's obviously my pretty little home, maybe a month ago. It's an in-progress photo as the trim gets repainted. We'll finish in the spring.)

Anyhow - I'm not a violent person, but I've told my husband "if you see me in a polyester pantsuit, or a velour jogging suit with kitties, a birdhouse, or a flowerpot embroidered on the front, perhaps on my way to a chair exercise class, GET A GUN and put me out of my misery."

Seriously, folks, I plan to be very active and busy; I don't sit still well for long. However I may be looking for some advice on how to proceed. In the months to come, I'm going to be picking your brains and I hope you'll be willing to help me figure it all out!

Turkey-Day Shenanigans

2011-11-26T16:33:00.008-05:00

This beautiful photo above was shot by my son the day after Thanksgiving. I'm assuming he and his buddies climbed the little mountain nearby our cottage after eating lots of leftover pie.

But this, below, was the "real" Thanksgiving shenanigans! That's my stepdaughter, her husband, and 2 kiddos and of course my son.

Luckily they don't check out my blog too often or I may have to delete this post!

And finally, yes, this photo is proof that my hubby was there too. He was left out of yesterday's post's photos. Hmm... someone doesn't look too happy... posing for too many pics perhaps?

An Adirondack Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T17:39:00.008-05:00

We have a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition. We celebrate the holiday at our "camp" - a cottage on lovely little Loon Lake, 1/2 hour from our home (that's where I usually am when I'm out in my kayak). My husband, son, and I are joined annually for turkey-day by my stepdaughter, her husband, and her two little boys. There's NO television (in other words: no football) and NO internet, so it's a wonderful place to laugh, play board games, eat, wrestle with the kids (they look forward to wrestling with 'Uncle Ben' - my son), and did I already say laugh?

That's my Ben in the blue. Looks like someone is always on top of him, even son-in-law!

We are so glad our 'bearded baby' was able to make it home from his life in Boston to spend Thanksgiving with us. We don't get to see him that often these days. Kids grow up.

Below are a couple more beautiful views of our snowy lakefront, taken today, the day after Thanksgiving, when the bright sunshine finally arrived. There was about 10" of fresh snow when we arrived yesterday morning. No kayaking this trip.

I'm somehow missing photos of hubby and stepdaughter. I'll have to share the whole group photo with you tomorrow after my son and his camera return home. (He's got the best photos.) He's spending another night at our wonderful little camp. Here is Ben, bundled up to stay warm, waiting for his best friends to arrive to spend the night.

When we got home, we discovered our Christmas cactus is a little confused. Thanksgiving cactus perhaps?

I hope you all celebrated as lovely a time with your own families this Thanksgiving, as we did with ours! Our favorite holiday, for sure!!!

Some really funny artwork

2011-11-22T23:25:00.008-05:00

This lesson was inspired by a one posted by Jacquelien at her blog Kids Artists and the results are some of the funniest pieces of kid art that I've seen in a while.
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To start, I read the story The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen to my first graders. This was always a favorite of mine - my dad always said I was like the princess in the story. I had to cut every tag out of clothing ("itchy!") and was (and I guess I still am) very sensitive to fabrics etc.

Anyhow, the kids made beds for their princesses from strips of corrugated cardboard, and then used pieces of fabric for the layers of mattresses. They were thrilled to dig through the big box of fabric scraps. Then they drew and cut out a princess with almost no direction (resulting in some very funny princesses), and added a pillow and blanket if desired. Finally they added a ladder for the princess, a ruffled or lace curtain if desired, and some glitter-glue 'bling'. That princess on the right above doesn't look too happy, does she?

I love the hands on the bald floating princess in the center picture above. She has a LOT of fingers! That prince had better watch out!! And the princess on the right is so covered with blankets that you can barely see her! I hope the gal on the left doesn't get cold, with no blanket at all.

The princess on the left looks like she's sleeping in a sweat suit, and the one in the middle I think is wearing a T-shirt and boxers. I guess she must have forgotten to bring her suitcase. (The're something missing in this story - it never explains WHY this princess is out and about all by herself on a rainy night looking for a place to sleep.) And what about the cutie on the right above? I think she's naked, with pink sparkles everywhere!!!

And then there's the chubby princess on the left, who has no arms, and is maybe growing a pink tail, and on the right, I think the poor princess looks like she's trying to escape. Maybe the prince isn't quite what she expected?

I think it's interesting that there isn't a single princess with a crown in the whole first grade.

November trees

2011-11-22T22:01:00.005-05:00

My 4th graders always love using black and white charcoal pencils for the first time. They chose from a variety of values of black and gray papers, and made branching trees and added their own touches of personality with details of their choosing. This year, the kids especially loved learning to make vines that wrapped around their branches.

I posted about this project here last year as well.

My two workshops - SUCCESS!

2011-11-20T17:54:00.016-05:00

These are scenes from a workshop I taught at the NYSATA conference this weekend. Attendees were learning how to make a trihexaflexagon, a tetratetraflexagon, and if they were brave enough, a kaleidocycle. HUH?! Look these things up if you've never heard of them; they are a wonderful link between art and math, and the trihexaflexagon could even be used for multicultural lessons in Islamic tile design (a social studies link!). They can be used to teach color theory, symmetry, and could link to lessons on M.C. Escher. Fit that all into your Common Core Standards, everyone!!!

I think everyone looks busy and happy, don't you? There were, I think 43 attendees, who, due to a scheduling problem with the hotel (we didn't get the promised block of workshop rooms), skipped a keynote speaker to attend this workshop, and stuck it out with me for almost 2 hours!

I was honored that they made the decision to come to my workshop despite the keynote and other offerings, and was gratified by their overwhelmingly positive responses. Thank you everyone for being great students and trusting me with your time! You were all fabulous students - please feel free to email me with any questions or problems you run into when you try this project without me there to help you fold.
*And thanks to the kind participant who willingly took my camera and shot these photos for me. I didn't get your name, but I really appreciate your help.

**By the way, if YOU are one of the people IN one of these pictures, and you don't want it on my post, just let me know which picture by leaving a comment below or sending me an email and I'll gladly remove it immediately. But honestly, you all look beautiful to me!

And then there was my other workshop (Come Blog with Me)!!

I was so worried about technology working OK that I forgot to get photos. (sorry) So here's a photo of my wonderful co-worker who attended the conference with me. While I was teaching my workshop about blogging, she was at a different workshop learning about Korean theater masks. Isn't she lovely? She had already heard my whole workshop, at 10pm the night before, in our hotel room. I wasn't going to ask her to sit through it again.

But anyhow, if you've been reading my prior posts, I want you to know that the internet worked without a hitch, and after sorting out a minor glitch with the projector, everything else went smoothly. I would have liked a larger audience (I didn't count but I'll guess there were 25 or so attendees) but I know there were lots of workshops scheduled concurrently, and we art teachers do LOVE our hands-on workshops so you have to hope you get the audience. Hopefully spending an hour with me was worthwhile to those who attended.

The primary goal in my workshop was to let people know three things:

How EASY it is to blog and read blogs (and how much fun it is to do this).
That blogs are a great source for lesson ideas, information exchange, dialogue, and more.
And that for art teachers who often work in isolation (no other art teachers in the school, and maybe working at more than one school, so always on the run), I wanted to share what a wonderful supportive and collaborative community we have formed through blogging. Art teachers need not ever feel alone.

That's it for now; I'll post a little more about the conference later.

A great day at my state conference!

2011-11-18T23:29:00.010-05:00

My fabulous NY State Art Teachers Association (NYSATA) annual conference started today! These images were from a workshop I attended called The Sweet Art of Vic Muniz, the artist profiled in the wonderful movie Wasteland. (If you haven't seen it, put it on your Netflix queue!) We were given photos that we placed under acetate, and traced with Hershey's Syrup!!! The we used Q-tips and toothpicks to manipulate the chocolate and create values. The results are then photographed, as Muniz does with his incredible artwork. These are some of our results. Pretty cool, huh??

Here's someone doing her tracing with syrup. Yum yum. No finger licking allowed, though.

This morning my coworker and I attended an AWESOME workshop on Visual Journaling, presented by fellow blogger Jen. Her blog is called Art Talk. Anyhow, the workshop was filled with super ideas and was a great way to start our time at the conference. So many great ideas to use!! Here's the results of some "playtime". We used modeling medium over plastic needlepoint mesh as a great stencil, and then removed the mesh (I don't know what it is actually called) and left a nice texture, to paint over and layer. We also sprayed liquid watercolors over various stencils and doilies and sprayed with water to make it drip. Here's an 'in progress' and my fun messy result.

There's a student art display at the conference, and below are the panels set up by me and my coworker (the grade 7-12 art teacher in my district) of a sampling of our students' work. My display is on the left, hers is on the right.

We also attended a brain-numbing workshop on the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and associated yadda-yadda and my opinion is that this stuff is so data intensive, so dependent on assessment, so filled with lists and acronyms and theories that it will suck all the joy out of art education. I don't want to have to worry about this stuff. BRAIN NUMBING for sure. But then we got to play with some colored conte at another workshop, so the world is still OK. And it's so good to see and catch up with old friends. I wish the hotel was nicer (it's highly imperfect) and that the temperature controls worked OK, but all in all, it's a great conference so far.

Tomorrow is a VERY BIG DAY. In the morning I'm presenting a hands-on workshop on the amazing trihexaflexagon. If you don't have a clue what that is, don't worry, I'll be posting this year's student results and information about this favorite lesson of mine in about a week when the kids have completed their work. Meanwhile, if you can't wait, I posted about it here last year.

And as if that is not enough, in the afternoon I'll be presenting a workshop called...drumroll please... Come Blog with Me! (Are you surprised?!) It's a 50 minute session, and I just did a dry run in the hotel room and it took me about an hour and a half. I think I'm going to have to leave something out. Pinterest perhaps? But I'm most nervous about the fact that this dopey hotel has weird internet issues, and I'm positively panicked that I won't be able to get on line and the whole workshop that I have been planning for months will go ka-poof!

Wish me luck! I'll tell you about it when I'm back home on Sunday.

Do you watch Work of Art on Bravo?

2011-11-16T23:36:00.003-05:00

My TV cable got funky on me tonight! I turned on the TV specifically intending to watch tonight's episode of Work of Art and the cable guide said it was on, but instead the cable played Top Chef. Then the station said "Work of Art, coming up next" but afterward there was just another episode of Top Chef.

Did this happen where you live? Or was it just something funky happening locally? If you did watch the show, can you tell me what happened? I'm sorry to have missed an episode. I suppose I can go to the show's website and see if I can find a synopsis, but I'd rather have your opinions!

Peacocks with shimmer and bling - grade 2

2011-11-10T21:34:00.012-05:00

I recently blogged here about Alex Beard's "Monkey see, Monkey Draw" book and the associated art game.In this game, my 2nd graders traced their hands and turned them into something, but NOT a turkey. Students had some interesting results, including several peacocks. Meanwhile, I had been bookmarking some lovely peacock projects that I'd seen on other blogs. So I thought it was time that we actually make our own peacocks. Here's what we did.

While the lessons I had bookmarked had produced lovely results, I decided to do things my own way, with decidedly varied results. We began by watching a video of peacocks fanning their beautiful displays, and we examined some authentic peacock feathers. We looked carefully at the shape of the bird's body and their unique features.

The kids drew their peacocks with pencils, outlined the birds and the 'eyes' on the feathers with Sharpies, and then began to paint. We used some liquid watercolors in blue, turquoise, and sparkly 'black' (more of a dark green, really) and some Prang metallic temperas I had leftover from a Klimt project a couple of years ago.

We completed the peacocks with white oil pastels for the stems of the feathers and the stripe above and below the eye, other color oil pastels for the feather lines and anywhere else appropriate, and finally sequins for 'bling'. By the way, don't you love the pigeon-toed penguin on the left below?

Some peacocks were quite successful, and others, well, I'll show you some of them too.

Below are two unique peacocks. The painting on the left was unique in the choice of a limited color palette. Good job! The painting on the right was, well, exuberant to say the least. I love the shape of the bird body.

And then there's a peacock that looks like it got caught in a windstorm, and another with colorful pine tree branches instead of feathers.

And did this peacock on the left below get his feathers stuck in a revolving door? I guess he doesn't want to be recognized, since it looks like he's wearing dark glasses.

I think the peacock on the left below is having a 'bad feather day' perhaps, and the one on the right is attempting (successfully, I guess) peacock camouflage. Where's the peacock?

Blogger insists on rotating the images below, but I had to share them anyhow. We've got, first, the Jackson Pollock action painting version, or maybe a 2nd grade attempt at abstract expressionism, then a bird with, instead of eyes on his feathers, I think they are calamari rings, and finally a beautiful bird with feathers that have been scared straight.

By the way, below is the metallic paint. It came in a set of several colors, metallic green, blue, violet, red, copper, silver, gold, and a steel blue color. They look gorgeous in the bottle but are very disappointing paints. They have a gelatinous consistency and do not have much coverage. You need to layer them to get any real vibrancy, and therefore require more patience than that of an average 2nd grader. But the kids are happy with their peacocks, so I am too.

Kayaking in November!

2011-11-06T18:14:00.004-05:00

Me in my kayak, hubby on the shore, writing in the journal.

It was a beautiful day, and hubby and I couldn't resist a few hours at our cabin on Loon Lake. I took the kayak out for what is likely the final spin of the year. So glad this is only 1/2 hour from home!

On a totally different note, blogger friend Hannah at Art.Paper.Scissors.Glue is having a blog problem and asked my advice. I'm turning over to you, readers, since I'm clueless and wish I could help her. Her most recent posts are NOT showing up on our blogrolls or Blogger dashboards (or in Google Reader). She has made several posts that you wouldn't know about, unless you click "home" on her site or happen to click her blog name instead of the image for the post.
So I'm asking two things:

if you have any advice to help Hannah solve her problem, or if you are having the same problem, please let her know, and
go to her blogs, click on "home" and look at all those wonderful posts she's done that nobody has seen (since they don't know about them).

I'm sure Hannah will appreciate this! Thanks everyone!

How to: Van Gogh inspired cut-away rooms

2011-11-05T19:34:00.014-04:00

A reader of my recent post My Dream Room wrote a comment requesting a tutorial on how to make the rooms. So here it is!

I experimented a bit to get what I thought was the perfect size, and these are my results. We used 12"x18" piece of tagboard, measured and folded in half horizontally for a 6" deep floor and a 6" high wall, and measured to create walls 4" deep (the floor sticks out a little past the walls) and a 10" long back wall. I tried other measurements first, but found if the walls were too deep, it was hard to glue stuff in, and this just seems to be optimal.

SO - I used the white board to show the kids how to measure, and we all did it together. With our papers horizontally in front of us, we measured up 6" from each side and connected across horizontally. We then measured in 4" from each end of the top, and each end of the bottom, and connected across vertically.

The kids then wrote their name and teacher initial along the top center of the paper, on the side we were marking. (This will become the back of the back wall.)

I then had the kids score all the lines, using a ball-point pen and a ruler. We creased the paper back and forth on each fold line, and cut on the two fold lines indicated in the diagram above.

Finally we folded and glued the two flaps under the floor, using glue sticks. I had the kids fold them so that their pen lines (and their names) were on the back, not inside the rooms. Voila! The rooms were complete and ready to add flooring, wallpaper, windows, doors, wall decorations, furniture, and fabric.
I wish I had photos of all the rooms, but for now, here's one more. I love the poster on the wall over the bed. Note: this child made a mistake, and it looks to me from this photo that he used the back wall as the floor, and therefore (obviously) the floor as the back wall. It just shows you that there's a lot of room for error without anything being irretrievably doomed. Yeah!

Anyhow - I introduced the project with a brief discussion of the painting of van Gogh's bedroom at Arles. It was brief, because we had already discussed van Gogh at length, and a print of the painting was one of many van Gogh's hanging on my bulletin boards. Including this brief discussion, the entire project took 4 art classes (40 minutes) for some kids, 5 for some others, and a few are straggling. Some kids also worked on them briefly during a couple of lunch times.

In the 2nd art class, I gave brief instructions on cutting out windows and how to fold tabs on furniture to glue it down. I did not put out the fabric until the 3rd art class; until then, it was construction paper, wallpaper, patterned papers, and magazine photos, as well as some mirror contact paper.

I am very lucky to have my students twice in a 6-day cycle. I realize that this project could drag on if you only saw the kids for 30 minutes once a week, but I think with some prep, you could simplify things to keep the project flowing quickly.

Hope this has helped!

My Dream Room! by 4th grade

2011-11-02T22:53:00.012-04:00

This is one of those lessons that make me proud to be an art teacher. No other teachers could deal with the problem-solving and open-ended solutions that happen on a daily basis in a good art program. A BIG thank you to Natalie and her post at her blog smART class that convinced me that I could successfully "borrow" this lesson from her.

Above is a portion of Garek's not-yet-complete room (there will be a blanket etc on the bed), and Karli's sweet artsy bedroom. I adore that she made herself in the lounge chair, and that her outfit matches her curtains. And then there's that cool desk/chair thing she designed on the right.

We had discussed van Gogh at length, and looked at a couple of versions of his Bedroom at Arles. The kids were given the opportunity to create their own rooms. Together we measured, cut, and folded to make the basic room structure.

I then showed them just a few basic guidelines for creating the contents of their dream rooms. I put out a huge selection of wallpaper samples, crazy papers, solid-color construction paper pieces, magazines and magazine photos, clear acetate scraps, silvery contact paper (used especially for mirrors and DVD's), fabric, and glue. These are just a few of the rooms - each one is totally different. I love the way the boys all seem to have included video game systems (note the controller on the bed in Ryan's room on the left). I thought Maddy's canopy over her raised platform bed was cool, and I love the way she decorated her room with her name and signs!

Some of the rooms, like Jazz's room on the left above, used color and pattern combinations I NEVER would have put together! Connor's room, on the right, is under the ocean, as you can see by the SCUBA diver out the window.
Daniel's room is a a jungle gym.
The kids used mostly glue sticks and Elmer's Glue-All, but I also kept a low-temp hot glue gun plugged in and ready, and Dan popped over to me at the glue gun frequently to have another layer of stuff zapped on for permanence. Totally cool room.

Wyatt's room is very hip, isn't it? Love the "loading..." on the flat screen TV. Too funny! And the open laptop on the table.

What I really liked about this project was the different solutions kids came up with - for example, ladders: some had cut-out rungs, some had glued-on rungs, and others were accordion-folded. And the stuff in their rooms - wow! There are fish tanks, and terrariums with reptiles in them, bunk beds, couches, "glass" top coffee tables, curtains with tie-backs, rugs, wallpaper trim, and more. There are Adirondack themed rooms, camouflage rooms, hunting lodges, tropical rooms, and so much more.

A lot of the furniture is crooked and mismatched, but the truth is, the kids really had to THINK to figure out how to put these together, so the learning was in the doing.

As a final step, I read (to the students) van Gogh's letter to Theo describing his room, the colors he used, and his desire for it to look restful and calm. The kids then wrote their OWN descriptions of their rooms, and these are displayed on top of the stacks in our school library, alongside the rooms. It meant I had a messy art room, but a successful lesson! I hope I remembered to unplug the glue gun.........

Trees, Texture, & Van Gogh

2011-10-28T16:57:00.006-04:00

My 3rd graders know everything there is to know about Vincent van Gogh!
They noticed that his swirls of paint looked thick and bumpy, and we reviewed the word "texture". We discussed how our paint is not thick enough to make a bumpy texture like van Gogh's, so we used glue and sand (an idea "borrowed" from Katie's and the wonderful artwork she posted here: Adventures of an Art Teacher). I posted about this briefly last week.

A word about the tree above on the left - I'm SO proud of this young artist. He does not have much fine motor skill, and after painting the tree and sky, it was an absolute mess. You couldn't find the tree anywhere. On the final work day, when we touched up colors and outlined with black as desired, I really encouraged him to locate his missing tree and sky. He went to work and in the end it's my favorite of all the paintings. I love the off-center placement of the tree; I think it looks pretty sophisticated, don't you?

The process - to begin, the kids drew their trees, added some bark texture, some ground texture, and some swirls in the sky (all with glue) and shook on some sand. When it was dry, in our next our class, they painted, beginning with warm colors in either the sky or tree. The following art class it was cool colors, in the parts not previously painted. The tree directly above on the right was done by a boy who was absent when we did the glue and sand. So he added glue and sand to his tree after he painted it, when the paint was still wet. It's totally different than the others, but still really cool! In the final art class, the kids added more color where needed and then used thinned black tempera to outline and highlight texture as desired. I'm in love with these paintings!
The tree on the right was done by a young gal who has been refusing to wear her art shirt (a fast rule in my room when there's 23 kids painting). But I wanted her to participate. I gave her markers and a wet paintbrush and this is her result - really interesting I think! And now she's back in her art shirt :)

Four of these were shown individually above, but not all so I thought I'd post as much of the board as I could fit in my lens. Each tree is SO unique!

Food for thought about drawing trees with kids-
Many of you post about drawing/painting trees, using the "V" or "Y" method. The problem is, when I look out my window here, every tree has a distinct trunk that continues, narrowing, to the top of the tree. Actually, with all the woods out my window, I only can see ONE tree that has a "Y" trunk, though there are plenty of "Y" branches. So unlike the rest of you, I generally don't teach tree drawing that way. It happens that THESE trees in this post all head right off the top of the paper, solving the problem of "how to end the tree". Maybe it's cheating, but they look pretty good, don't you agree?

Hopefully soon my 4th graders will be starting those charcoal trees that you all liked so much last year. Maybe we can try to include the tippy-tops!

Alex Beard & Monkey See, Monkey Draw

2011-10-28T16:35:00.006-04:00

My second graders looked at some artwork by Alex Beard, who is on display in my room along with M.C. Escher, as many of his paintings are sort of tessellations. We read his book Monkey See, Monkey Draw. We did an activity often done by Alex Beard when he works with kids, which is a simple lesson relating to the story. The children traced their hand, and then had to turn it into "something". The only rule: NO TURKEYS.
Michael made this adorable deer.
Thomas is still working to finish coloring his awesome dragon.
Peyton made this great tiger -hmmm it seems to have 5 legs. At least I hope they are all legs...

Some kids made dinosaurs, flowers, trees, and more, but MANY of them, perhaps inspired by Alex Beard's peacock image hanging on my bulletin board, decided to make peacocks.

As a result, I decided we needed to paint some peacocks. We watched a great video of a peacock showing off his feathers, and examined some real peacock feathers close up. We have now begun drawing peacocks for a shimmery painting, with sparkly crayons for resist.

Will blogger like me better today?

2011-10-28T16:25:00.003-04:00

First snowfall, out the art room window. The ground was white by the time I got home.

This morning, just some ground cover left. Brrrr.....

Not too much snow, compared to some pics I saw posted by a Colorado blogger, but still, our first of the season and baby's it's COLD outside.

Yeah! Blogger let me upload photos today!

Frustrated.

2011-10-27T21:36:00.003-04:00

Anyone else having blogger issues tonight?

I tried uploading photos of today's snowfall (YES, SNOW!) shot out my classroom window, about 16 times. ERROR.

Then I tried uploading photos of a project with results that have me exceptionally excited. I really want to share these photos with you all!!!

I removed all the photos from my laptop and re-loaded them in off my camera. Then I tried to upload them to blogger again. I tried some of the same photos, some different ones.

Error message after error message after error message.

I've been working on it for hours, all through the finale of Project Runway, and this is all I have to show. Nothing. (Though, speaking of Project Runway, if I was tall, skinny, long-legged, and flat-chested, none of which in the slightest bit even remotely describes me, I'd love to wear Anya's gorgeous flowing outfits.)

Rats to Blogger. How come everyone else has been posting photos tonight?

back from Lake Placid and my brain is full...

2011-10-23T13:52:00.010-04:00

I spent the past weekend in Lake Placid (where the 1980 Winter Olympics were held). I was there to attend my NYSUT (NY State United Teachers) annual Regional Leadership Conference, learning about the new regulations regarding teacher APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) and the associated contractual ramifications. Hence my overstuffed brain. (The photos above and at the end of this post were shot on the way down through the "Cascades", coming out of the mountains toward the highway on the way home.)

So I want to talk about the APPR. But first - here's the early morning view out of my hotel window. In front of the mountains is Mirror Lake, which sits directly next to the main street of the village. While the autumn leaves are still rich in gold, rust, orange, burgundy and olive here at home, further north in Lake Placid, nestled in the mountains, there's barely a leaf left on the tree, and I'm sure some of the 46 High Peaks already have snow on top. Winter comes early in Lake Placid, and spring comes late, but still, Lake Placid and nearby Saranac Lake, Keene, and Keene Valley are all lovely picturesque villages.

Back to the APPR: Here in NY state we have new legislation regarding the APPR. I don't want to attempt to explain it all, (I'd have to write a novel), but I'll try to lay out a few basics:

20% of the rating will be based on student growth on state assessments. For non-tested subjects (such as ART) growth will be measured by district-wide student growth goal setting process. (What does this MEAN? Who decides what this process is? No answers thus far...)
20% will come from multiple locally-determined measure of student achievement.
60% will come from the state teaching standards using multiple measures: a rubric, observation, and evidence collection.
Only the first 20% comes directly from the state; the other 80% must be collectively bargained. (We have our work cut out for us; our contract expires this June so we should begin negotiations this winter.)
For the 60%, the state has approved 9 possible rubrics (that align with the NY State Teaching Standards), and boy, are these rubrics intense, running about 35 pages or so each. Yikes. It will take forever to simply READ them all, and then we have to select one and determine how to assign points, and negotiate it all with the rest of our contract items (such as salary and health insurance).
Then there's the TIP (teacher improvement plan), TED (Teacher Evaluation and Development system) and probably a few other acronyms that aren't occurring to me here.

Meanwhile, what are the NY State Teaching Standards? Truth is, I didn't know until this weekend. (Hint: they are NOT the same thing as the NY State LEARNING Standards.) Here they are , greatly simplified:

Knowledge of Students & Student Learning
Knowledge of Content and Instructional Planning
Instructional Practice
Learning Environment
Assessment for Student Learning
Professional Responsibilities and Collaboration
Professional Growth

So you see why my brain is so full. I now have to turn this info over to others to figure out where we go from here.

If I needed a good reason for my decision to retire in June, this would be it. I'm so discouraged. Don't get me wrong, I think there are good parts to all of this, but it is SO weighty. I think our administration will be bogged-down with walk-throughs and observations and filling out rubrics, and I think the teaching staff will be very stressed trying to jump through all the hoops. And I don't think it will make better teachers or improve student accountability. Teachers will be so worried about the kids showing progress, and scoring on standardized tests, and keeping track of everything with evidence binders and such, that I think the open-ended exploration that happens in art, and the wonder of creative expression will be much harder to find. And teachers who allow this exploration instead of worrying about covering every point on the rubric will be getting poor evaluations and maybe a TIP. I'm not interested.

Unlike many of you, who maybe had some extensive training in educational philosophy and practice, I grew up and went to college in the hippie era which preceded a lot of the stuff you've been using. All pretty loosey-goosey. Over the years since then, I've seen all sorts of research come and go, all sorts of initiatives be enacted and become obsolete, and I've become a little cynical. We spend a lot more time on data collection and assessment, but I don't think we're doing a better job because of all of this stuff. As a matter of fact, I think the kids are often shortchanged because we are so worried about meeting the standards.

Enough to think about? Time for my nightly cup of tea.......

1st grade skeletons

2011-10-23T13:33:00.004-04:00

My first graders used paper straws and Elmer's School Glue to make these cute skeletons, and then used construction paper crayons to embellish. We started with a "T" for the spine and shoulders and then added bones according to the pose. I like the way some have fingers, and wow, look at all those toes and ribs on the skeleton to the right above!! Holy moly!

OK, on the vertical image below, what do you think was intended by those red circles? Honestly I didn't even NOTICE them until I added the image just now. Oops!

60 Minutes on Vincent van Gogh

2011-10-23T13:13:00.004-04:00

A couple of bloggers have posted about a 60 Minutes segment on Vincent van Gogh, and others have commented to tell me about it! (THANKS!) One of my students even cutely tried to tell me about it: "Mrs. B, I saw on TV that Vincent van Gogh DIDN'T cut his own ear off!!!" That's definitively NOT what the segment says, but I appreciate the attempt on my student's part to recall what he had seen. The segment sheds some doubt on whether Vincent actually shot himself.

I spent much of the summer reading a compilation of Vincent's letters to Theo, and from his obvious extreme mental instability and severe depression, I had never doubted the suicide. I don't think this new evidence makes much difference though; whatever really happened that day, van Gogh died, and I doubt he would have lived much longer anyhow, given the extremes of his mental illness and likely temporal lobe epilepsy.

Anyhow, if you haven't seen it yet, check it out here, and make sure you also watch Part 2 and the Virtual Tour. It's well done and there are images that you may have never seen before, information you may have never heard.

Blob monsters and shaving cream?! - 2 "borrowed" projects

2011-10-20T17:29:00.013-04:00

I've been borrowing from other bloggers again! Even those of us who have been around for a while can still find new ideas and techniques. It's always more fun to try something new, or at least put a new spin on an old lesson, than it is to just repeat... repeat... repeat!

Kindergarten organic "blob monsters" - I discovered this lesson at We Heart Art.
I didn't deviate much from the lesson posted there. Anyone who knows me knows I'm terrified of kindergartners - I'd rather teach a group of any other age. The K's are, basically, "tadpoles" - still developing. I began my teaching career with 9 years of high school art, so switching gears so dramatically was a real struggle. Still, after 25+ years, I still struggle with teaching kindergarten. So I'm always thrilled to find a lesson that is just perfect for these little guys.

Anyhow, about this lesson: We read the book Jeremy Draws a Monster and made an organic shape with a piece of yarn on our paper. We traced around the yarn with a crayon, and then got imaginative. We first talked about how to make eyes look like eyes, etc, but mostly we just had fun imagining. Some monsters were silly, some mean, and each one was unique.

I liked this lesson so much, when we had a little extra time in first grade today, we did the same exact thing, only we used construction paper crayons on colored paper. The results were again adorable and the kids really were proud of their monsters. Unfortunately I sent the artwork home and forgot to take pictures!

And here are some silhouettes on 9"x12" paper marbled with shaving cream and liquid watercolors. I do a silhouette project with 5th graders every year, usually on a watercolored paper, sometimes sprinkled with salt, but this was the first time I tried it using a marbled sky.

A lot of people have posted about making marbled paper with shaving cream. I'd never tried it, but we had a blast doing it. I did do some things a little differently than other people, though. I had the kids tape off a rectangle on their table the size of their paper, and then set the paper aside. I sprayed the shaving cream directly on the table, not in a tray like most others have done. I had a variety of liquid watercolors available, and after the kids spread out their shaving cream (kind of like frosting a cake) the kids dripped the paint on and used pop sticks to swirl it around. We were trying to make Van Gogh-like swirls, but some kids got carried away and swirled too much. In the end the results were still useable, and most kids got to spread their cream out a second time and do a second print. They picked which one to use for their silhouette and saved the other to use at a later date.

Cleanup was maybe the most fun of all. The kids used squares of cardboard to squeegee the excess shaving cream off the tables, and gathered up mountains of it in their hands. They were enthralled. Then, I passed out sponges and the shaving cream, even with paint in it, worked as a wonderful table cleaner and the room smelled fabulous too! It was so easy to clean up, that I can't imagine using some sort of tray. My tables are easily washable and everyone was happy.

By the way - the little bits of shine and sparkle on some of these pictures are scraps of metallic contact paper I have, or, as in the crown on the Statue of Liberty, metallic paint dabbed on with a Q-tip stick. The contact paper doesn't show true color in the photos - the stuff the kids used was either plain mirror-like silver, or silver with sort of a holographic look that has a pattern of tiny circular designs that look like little CD's (hence the moon and reflection in the lighthouse image).

The black is Sharpie (for tiny details) and India ink. The kids love using it. I find that the concept of silhouettes is a challenge for some kids to understand, which is why I try to incorporate a silhouette lesson with my 5th graders somehow every year. I was surprised this year - no roller coasters, only one city, no castles, only one bridge, no trains, only one howling wolf, no helicopters, etc. I had an image box they could sift through and I couldn't interest anyone in the cupolas and weathervanes I had. This group of kids really struggled with ideas but in the end I think they did pretty well.

Advice please?

2011-10-18T16:12:00.003-04:00

I've said this before. I'm a great computer USER, but I'm extremely technologically ignorant. That goes for internet stuff too. I'm a dinosaur.

Anyhow, here's the reason I'd like advice. In the past week or two, I've been receiving a lot of emails that say this: "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." Then the email asks me to confirm that I know the person making the request.

Sometimes the invites are 'from' a fellow blogger/friend (maybe YOU who are reading this), and most others have been from acquaintances from NYSATA, my state art teachers association. These are not necessarily people that I know well, but I do know who they all are.

So I want to know, first of all, what exactly is LinkedIn? And what advantage is it for me to respond yes? And does the person the invite is coming from know that they are sending it? Or is it done automatically from some list serve somewhere (such as NYSATA members, or workshop presenters, etc)?

As I said, you are probably more savvy about this stuff than me. I'm pretty clueless. I figured out how to use blogger and I'm quite happy, but then this other stuff comes along and I don't know what it all means. So please, be honest with the advice, but don't use any big techno-words because little old art teacher me won't have a clue what you're talking about!

Thanks, friends!

Two little surprises

2011-10-18T15:36:00.006-04:00

My 3rd graders are currently painting textural trees, using Elmer's Glue-All and playground sand, and tempera paint. Today we had two fun surprises.

First: one boy used a LOT of glue and sand. In his previous art class, he painted over the dried glue and sand, using warm colors tempera. Today we looked at it, and here's how it dried (below and at the top of this post). How cool is that?

Then: the kids are are painting without washing brushes (the water you see on the table is just for keeping brushes moist). Last time they used was warm colors, today they used cool colors. To keep the paint colors as clean as possible, I showed them how to dip their brush in to the color without stirring. One boy discovered an interesting drip had occurred in a dish of green paint. The drip had formed a lovely flower! He had to take it from table to table to show everyone!! Here's closeup photo of the drip.

You'll have to wait till next week to see the finished work. These kids have art class again on Monday and will put on the finishing touches then, touching up with both warm and cool and adding some black to the textures as desired. I will post them when they are done. But I can tell you now - they are pretty awesome!

Layered Landscapes with Swirly Skies

2011-10-16T14:54:00.000-04:00

I'm so happy with the results of this project. My 2nd graders were fascinated learning about Vincent Van Gogh, and had a great time imitating swirly skies by using our multicolor crayons (the kind I made by melting crayons into a muffin tin) for layers of texture rubbings.

When the skies were complete, the kids each tore a couple of 8"x18" construction paper in half horizontally, and used the torn pieces to create 2 layers of a landscape. Then we discussed "near and far", and how things close up look bigger, and far away look smaller (kind of a primary lesson in perspective). They cut scraps of paper to make houses, trees, and more, making big ones for the front layer, medium ones in the middle, and small ones in the distance. We used crayons and markers to add details when the glue was dry. I was impressed at how well the kids got the concept, even adding in some roads and sidewalks, narrowing as they recede. Aren't they terrific?

Sunday Comic not so funny

2011-10-16T01:17:00.002-04:00

Sadly, I don't think I need to say a word...

Kindergartners paint lines and colors!

2011-10-16T00:40:00.003-04:00

I posted details about this lesson last year here, so this year I'll just post the pictures.

Painting Sunflowers

2011-10-16T00:26:00.004-04:00

We had sunflowers from the school garden in my classroom, and I gave assorted colors tempera to the 4th graders and let them paint without much direction. My only stipulation was that the negative space be filled. The 1st graders also painted the sunflowers, with some washable watercolors.

Pumpkin Painting for the Pug Parade

2011-10-16T00:11:00.003-04:00

We only had a couple of days to get these done, so 4th graders painted them during lunch and 6th graders who were done with their Blue Willow plates painted the rest during art time.

Meanwhile, 4th graders brought home their crazy masks,

and 3rd graders rocked out before taking home their guitars.

Too funny!

2011-10-13T22:58:00.002-04:00

Sometimes my students do things that totally crack me up. That happened today.

Let me start by saying that, as the years have gone by, I've gotten more relaxed about cleanup. I'm passionate about making sure paintbrushes are well-cleaned, since I don't want to have to replace them, but I worry a little less about some other stuff. There are days, like today, that not everyone was doing something messy. The only ones painting were those 5th graders who were still finishing projects. So I asked the last kids cleaning (in retrospect, these included a few funny, impish boys) to check that there were no brushes left in the sink. I've known the kids long enough to trust that if I ask, they will do the job. So today I didn't check up on them when they said that everything had been cleaned up.

Fast-forward a few hours and I'm packing my bags to go home, and I noticed my big tub of sponges was almost empty. Where had the sponges gone? I peeked into the sink, and there they were, soggy wet, and neatly stuffed individually into my Kool-Aid water containers.

I had a good laugh, but will reprimand the boys (lovingly) tomorrow, since the wet sponges tend to fall apart if not allowed to dry out between uses. I'm sure they were waiting to see what my reaction would be when I found their artistic creation in the sink. Too funny!

A ride in the Amphicar!!!! Yahoo!

2011-10-10T21:28:00.010-04:00

Why are we standing by a car with seaweed hanging off the bumper? Because it's an AMPHICAR, and we just drove out of the lake!!! (You can click to enlarge all these photos.)

Let me back up. This is Phylise in her driveway with her Amphicar. (I think Phylise was named after me; I was 10 years old when she was born and our parents were best friends.) The Amphicar is a German car, produced in the 60's, which means this car, which belonged to her father, is over 40 years old. I spent much of my childhood in what is now Phylise's house, playing Barbies, listening to the Beatles, watching The Wizard of Oz, and oh so much more, with my first and best friend, Phylise's big sister Annie. But somehow, though I spent so much childhood time at Fish Creek boating and fishing with both our families, I didn't remember ever actually getting a turn to ride in the Amphicar. Until tonight!

I'm excited to be going for an Amphicar ride!
Don't you love the license plate?

Here's Phylise at the wheel, while we take a spin in Saratoga Lake at sunset. Nice moon, beautiful evening! People are very surprised when they see a car driving INTO the lake!

Before going home, we stopped to take the seaweed off the bumper!

Thank you Phylise, for a delightful evening. I'm sure our daddies were smiling to to see their baby girls out there on the lake together!

Blogger won't let you leave comments? Here's a solution!

2011-10-09T22:19:00.006-04:00

A fellow blogger emailed me the other day, to say he had been having trouble leaving comments on my blog. This is not a new problem, and not confined to this blogger or my blog. I believe the main problem is this: Blogger and Microsoft Internet Explorer are like oil and water; they do not mix.

If you use a Mac, you don't use Internet Explorer and therefore have not encountered this problem. But if you use a PC, and Internet Explorer is your search engine of choice, then it's likely you've had some frustration with Blogger now and then and maybe couldn't figure out how to fix it.

A simple solution: if you use a PC, download, install, and use Mozilla Firefox as your search engine. Voila! The problems will disappear! Another blogger noted in a comment that using Google Chrome will solve the problem as well!

Using Firefox has slight differences than Internet Explorer. Instead of "favorites" you'll have "bookmarks". Inserting and moving stuff around is just a wee bit different. But there are no major differences and in the end I prefer using Firefox and hopefully so will you. My tech person at school actually suggested the move to Firefox when I was having problems on my computer at school (totally unrelated to blogging) because it is more trouble-free.

Obviously, it would be nice if Blogger didn't have all its quirks, but it's really hard to complain too much about something we use every day for free. In that respect, Blogger rocks!

A little of this, a little of that

2011-10-04T23:25:00.012-04:00

Sixth graders are finishing up their Blue Willow china patterns after learning about monochromatic color. (*Note that some of these are just works-in-progress, and I don't know why that last one rotated 90 degrees.) They are looking GORGEOUS. They actually began this project last spring, after reading The Willow Pattern Story, but I was out for 2 weeks due to minor surgery. Things moved rather slowly with the sub, and we would have had to rush to get them done before the end of the school year when I returned. I had planned for them to be on paper plates, but when I looked at their design plans, they were so good that I agreed to put the designs away and hunt down plates in yard sales all summer. (Their designs were either based on an element or elements of the story, or told their own story. They were to include a border design, and some of the plates had a raised pattern that I allowed the kids to use if they desired.) As a result of my yard sale shopping, everyone gets to paint on a "real" plate! The kids are using a variety of blue Sharpies for drawing, and painting with Nasco Bulk-krylic paint in pthalo blue, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, and white. We are then sealing with a gloss acrylic varnish. I'm so proud of these kids!

Here's some other things we've done to start the year:

Today first graders used watercolors to paint some variations of the sunflowers in my art room (from the school garden).

Second graders started the school year with a warm and cool variation of "A Bad Case of Stripes"
Fifth graders' first project of the year was a quickie symmetrical name design. I've seen similar projects posted on other blogs.