making trees.

This kinder project was inspired by an image by illustrator Jamey Christoph. I recently did a project based on his work with the 2nd graders and thought another of his pieces would be an interesting mixed media project for my youngest students.

This image provides a clear cut introduction to the different parts of a tree. Trunk, branches, and leaves. Fruit too, but the classes weren't able to get to that last piece in the hour we had together.

When I shared this picture with  my classes we identified the parts of the trees, the different light and dark colors we saw, and how the background color got lighter as it went down the paper.

The students focused on these aspects in the lesson. Plus, they got some practice cutting, gluing, and pattern making.

I started the hands on part of the lesson with a demo on how to make a color lighter by adding more water to it. This part of the project was pretty mellow. Calm kids going back and forth, back and forth with their brushes to fill the space. When finished, students put their papers at the back of their table to dry.

Then we focused on making leaves, trunks, and branches. Students made straight cuts to make trunks and branches out of two pieces of different value brown paper. They also cut leaves out of different color value green sheets. To make the leaves, students folded the paper before drawing and cutting, so that they would cut out two shapes at once.

Students then added patterns to their leaves with crayola color sticks.

Once they had finished pattern making, they got their painted backgrounds from the back of their tables, so that they could glue the different parts together.

Before students glued on the parts, I asked them to place the pieces on the background where they wanted them to go. I told them the trunks should touch the bottom of the paper. I modeled how to cut or tear smaller pieces of brown to make branches. Once they had a plan, they were allowed to glue. Then, they could place and glue the leaves where they wanted to see them on their trees. I emphasized that they could overlap leaves and trees to make parts look they were in front of others.

I gotta say, I really like the way these turned out. Interesting choices and arrangements all around the kinder classes.

I put a few of them together. Kinda cool to think of them as a longer panorama:)

A funny note- as students were putting these together the abstractions of Franz Kline came to mind. Something about the diagonals, use of thick and thin, and the contrast of dark and light. I was kind of obsessed with the guy's paintings in undergrad, so it was interesting to have that flashback with the little ones:)

blowing bubbles.

Spring is in the air:)

My daughter was playing with a gallon full of bubble solution at her brother's birthday party a couple weeks ago and poured most of it out on the lawn. Doh! It was around this time I came across the poster below, by Telegramme Studio in London.

Bobby Evans is the illustrator and designer behind all of Telegramme's creations. Bobby does a lot of designs for musicians and bands, but also does work for a wide variety of other clients. I like the weathered, vintage, letterpress feel of many of his images. They're clean designs with a bit of a rough edge to them.

This project would allow my kindergarten students (age 5) to practice drawing and cutting skills. I shared the image with my students and we identified what the person was doing, what kind of shape we saw a lot of, and what sizes of those shapes we saw.

After that, the students and I got to work. We drew out the hand shape together. This was the most challenging part of the exercise, but I feel that it also added a lot of character to each of the designs. No two were alike. I did put a dot on their paper, so we all started in the same place and the hands wouldn't be super small in the final drawings.

They then colored the hand. I asked them to press hard, so that the color looked nice and bold. The wand came next, followed by a few hand drawn bubbles. I asked them to use big, medium, and small circles here. When they colored the bubbles in they were supposed to press softly, so they could add a shadow too.

Once they were finished coloring the bubbles and they had added a "C" shadow on one side of them, they were ready for some cutting. Each student got two pieces of paper. One square had a large pre-drawn circle on it, the other was folded and had a one medium and one small circle on it. Students cut out these bubbles and placed them where they wanted them to go. I wanted them to lay them all out before gluing to get them to start thinking about planning in art. Then they got gluing:)

The final step was to add simple designs to a few of their cut out bubbles to give their designs a little visual variety.

I also did this lesson with our moderate/severe special day class. I am working on developing their fine motor control. They have done some collage work with me before. I pre-cut the shapes that they need for each project. I have been working with them on holding gluesticks and crayons correctly and firmly so they can add glue or leave bold marks on their paper.  Some of the students require assistance with this, while others are more independent. This class did a great job with this project. 

a lil' positive with the negative.

The 3rd grade project this week was inspired by notan, which is a Japanese design concept that focuses on the play of dark and light when placed next to one another in art.

The project was also inspired by the fabulous heart notan designs that Mrs. Haake's 5th graders created at Apex Elementary School in North Carolina.

I started the lesson by explaining what a notan is. I shared a Yin and Yang symbol on the board ("hey, that's from Kung Fu Panda!") to talk about dark and light shapes in art. I also used my body and the space around it to demonstrate the difference between positive and negative shapes.

I then walked the classes through the steps of the project by drawing out each step on the board.

When I shared examples of the finished project, the kids got pretty excited with the possibility of making their own heart notan designs.

There were many interesting variations in heart shape and the shapes that were cut out from the heart.

There were a few recurring issues. The first was that numerous students in each class made their hearts too small to have much success when they had to cut shapes out of it. I tried to remedy this by having students get my approval before cutting the heart shape out. This worked out pretty well in the long run.
The second issue was that some students had a hard time understanding how to reassemble the pieces once they had all the small pieces cut out. This worked out pretty well when I worked with those students individually after modeling it for the class as a whole. There weren't as many issues with this as there were with heart size, but it came up a few times with each class.
The third issue was that some students wanted to make their cut out shapes too small and/or too detailed and/or too close together. I emphasized that they should draw their cut out shapes so they could easily cut them out. We talked about keeping the shapes a finger width apart and too turn the paper to help them cut out tricky and detailed spots.

Overall, the kids did a great job with the project. It was a fun way to introduce the concepts of positive and negative shapes with the students:)

symmetry skate.

Well, I couldn't let the 5th graders have all the fun with skateboards this week, could I?

Nope:)

I found these fly designs by Samuel Murdoch online last week. Samuel was born, raised, and schooled in England, but now resides in Vietnam. He did a series of deck designs for the LB Skateshop. Each of the animals he chose is native to Vietnam/Asia. I loved the tie in to native animals. The designs, themselves, are super clean and bold.

The added bonus is that the designs are a showcase for symmetry, which is what I am focusing on with the second graders this go around. Perfect:)

The classes did 3d symmetrical paper snowflakes last week, so I revisited the concept of symmetry with them when they arrived. I also did the same thing with using collage to make art. I told them we would be revisiting both things this lesson, but the end result would look a lot different than what they made last week.

Before starting the hands on activity, I told the class that we would not focus on an animal native to Vietnam, but one that was native to California. I also told them this animal was on the state flag. Yes, we would be using the grizzly bear as our focus.

1. we shaped the board
2. we folded and cut the head shape
3. we folded and cut the face shape
4. we glued both parts on to the paper decks
5. we then used leftover cuttings of the dark paper to use for locating the eyes
6. we folded, cut, and glued the mouth and nostrils
7. we folded, cut and glued the teeth and eyes
8. we added symmetrical designs to the top and bottom spaces of the deck, using leftover paper and colorsticks
9. we cleaned up
10. we let out a big growl!

I'd say the teeth were the hardest part for most of the classes. The small zigzag cuts were a bit tricky for them. Even though everybody followed the same steps, there were many interesting variations of bears and background designs. When students were adding background elements I emphasized that would be how their designs would look a lot different than their classmates'.