A Color for Every Hour of the Day

First of all, I hope everyone is staying warm! We don't have school again tomorrow because of how cold it is. I don't know if I mentioned it, but we haven't had a full week since before Christmas break. Either because of snow, ice, cold, or other holidays. At this point I can say that I'm ready to be in the class room for a full week. Snow days are nice once in awhile as a surprise to lighten your week. However, I am all caught up on extra work and ready to be teaching those kiddos some art! We did have school today so let me catch you up.

Here's an update on the clay bowls and spoons that the fourth graders are working away at industriously. They are glazing and doing an excellent job, with only a few students forgetting and painting the bottoms of their bowls :) Here are some images of them glazing up a storm.

But what I want to focus on in this post are the wonderful Color Wheel Clocks that our third graders have finished. It was quiet the process. We reviewed color theory and learned some new things about Intermediate Colors as well. We spent a whole class period reviewing how to use a ruler and learning how to use a protractor, (look Geometry in 3rd grade! Math and Art!) in order to divide our circles up evenly. Then using only yellow, blue, and red, students mixed and painted a twelve section color wheel! They were fabulous!

That finished, they outlined and numbered the twelve sections to resemble a clock. This part was a little tricky considering that the numbers some times turned out upside down. Everyone had to be sure to keep the color wheel still and not rotate it while writing the numbers. The 12 always had to be right side up!

I spent some time laminating and all that was left was to put on the clock mechanism.

Each mechanism came with the parts that were needed. They were left over from the pervious art teacher so I'm not sure where they came from, but they were easy to figure out. Students were given a cardboard circle to go behind the clock for extra support. Each clock had a hour, minute, and second hand, all battery operated with on AA battery. So far we've gotten great reports from students that they are hanging on their walls and ticking away!

 

Back after forever! Talking about pattern!

So hello to all. I know here the holiday break was much longer than we expected. We had several days off because of snow and temperatures. I haven't had a full week since then because of various other commitments, I think next week will be my first full week since before Christmas! Craziness.

We came back in full swing in the art room. The 4th graders are right in the middle of clay. We will be glazing today and next week so as soon as those start coming out of the kiln I will be posting pictures.

I wanted to highlight a kindergarten project this week. The students are learning about pattern. I've found that anytime I can give them non-traditional objects to help illustrate the new concept, they really experience success. So we talked about pattern and some students caught on right away and gave examples from their imagination, the room, their clothes etc...


Then we busted out marshmallows and tooth picks! The children were told to work together at their tables and come up with several different patterns. Of course they were instructed not to eat the marshmallows because so many little hands were touching them! Germs!
 Let me tell you, this kept them entertained for a good long while. Longer than I was expecting. I hope the chance to construct and manipulate the patterns they were creating will help cement their learning for the projects that we will be doing in the next couple of weeks involving patterns.

Writing computer code in the art room?

Last week, I had two of my first grade classes participate in The Hour Of Code (http://csedweek.org/). I have to admit I only did it because they were offering free storage space on Drop Box which can totally come in handy.
But as the kids were working, I saw some other benefits. They were really problem solving. The conversations were great. I had them partner up and work at laptops and those kids were discussing different ways they could program the bird to get the pig. they were really great thinking conversations.

 

Art is all about thinking and solving problems and so I thought, what a great connection! So after they were done, we had a little conversation about how being an artist doesn't mean you have to paint or draw. Being an artist means being creative. We talked about how they were creative when they were trying to come up with unique ways to solve their programming problems.
We came to the conclusion in the end that no matter what you end up doing when you grow up, if you are thinking creatively then you are using your artistic skills.

So even though I did Hour of Code for selfish reasons, it ended up being a great lesson for my kids!

Clay!

I missed a week of posting! Last week was crazy! I was out for a couple of days because I am participating in a professional learning cohort on 21st Century Learners and Education. Hopefully as that research develops I will be posting more about it. But for now, suffice it to say that it kept me busy last week and I wasn't able to post.

Maybe it's insane of me but the 4th grade classes are doing pinch pot bowls and spoons out of clay before Christmas break! We are attempting to have them all done by then so that they can dry out and I can fire them before the students get back in January. Then students can take their time glazing their pieces. I wanted to do these classes early to also have time to do clay with other grades depending on the supplies we have left.

 

So last week we had a day where we talked about the basic terms involved in making things with clay. Firing, Leather Hard, Bone Dry, Coil, Pinch, Slab etc... click here for an awesome worksheet to hand out to students. We learned about the tools of a ceramicist: loop tool, clay knife, wire tool, rib etc... and also we looked at some non-traditional tools that could be used such as a comb or a fork or material. We also took a mini tour of the kiln so that everyone knew what it looks like and what it does. Then students spent the second half of class simply experiencing the medium. The excitement in the room was inspiring! I don't have to work very hard to get everyone pumped up about making things out of clay.

This week students are going to be making the spoons. And then next week they will make bowls. Their only guidelines are it has to be in a pinch pot style and they must use texture of some kind and the bowl and the spoon have to obviously belong together. They can make that connection however they want; similar style, texture or coloring.

On a side note, I was asked to hang some of our fabulous student artwork up in the administration building. It looks great! Here some of the photos:

Hubble Space Telescope: There is color in space!

I want kids to be excited about color. I think color is one of the most exciting elements of art and it can be used to create so many different effects in a student's artwork. Color is all around us, we think clouds are white  but really they are full of greys and purples and yellows and blues and greens. We think the water is blue but it's not, it's full of all sorts of colors and reflections.

In second grade we talked about space and the color that is in space. We discussed the colors that we see when we look at space, and how it seems to be only a couple of colors. Then we talked about the Hubble Space Telescope. We looked at pictures of it and discovered how it worked. ( Hubble Space Telescope website) But what we really spent time looking at was the pictures that it sends back to Earth. Man these pictures have some great color! (Video of Hubble Pictures) This project inspiration came from this blog, check it out! makeitawonderfullife.blogspot.com

The students practiced using chalk pastels. They practiced several techniques that I demonstrated (blending colors together, putting colors on top of each other, making the edges of shapes fuzzy, and using scrap paper to mask an area of their artwork.) and they also just plain got comfortable with the medium.

On the second day of this project, I had several pictures taken from the Hubble Telescope. Again I did a demo to show students how  one of those pictures would translate into a chalk pastel drawing. We discussed how my picture didn't look exactly like the Hubble Telescope pictures and that was okay because we were just using the pictures as inspiration (where we get ideas) rather than trying to copy them. Students went to town and boy did a lot of them turn out great! What an awesome project to explore color. The students were so excited to learn all about how the telescope worked and they really got into the idea of color in space. I loved this project, easy and inspiring and definitely full of color!

Colors!

Kindergarten students are learning all about Primary and Secondary Colors!
We spent three days for each class on a Primary Color. We had Yellow Day, Red Day, and Blue Day. We painted using each color, after brainstorming a list of things that were each color. The kids had a lot of fun and it helped with really getting them used to the procedure for painting.

Then we started talking about Secondary Colors and this is the part I really want to talk about today because the kids just had a blast! I wanted them to watch Secondary Color mixing happen and in several different ways, not just mixing paint or coloring them. So we did Secondary Color Handshakes and we did Secondary Color Cookies.

For the handshakes, each student got to put a Primary Color on their hand and then go find someone who's hand was a different color and shake hands so that the colors mixed together. We surprisingly had very little mess. They loved how it felt and how it looked.

For the cookies, each student got their own graham crackers and red, yellow, and blue frosting and we mixed our frostings on our cookies to make orange, green, and violet cookies. Not only did they look cool, but they tasted great. The hope is they will remember that lesson for awhile!

Everyone loves Grumpy Cat!

We're easing our way into color. The 4th graders are doing an awesome project this year! They are studying Pop Art. We learned that Pop Art involves (among other things); lots of color and images that are popular at the time the artwork is made. We took a look into the life of one of the most famous Pop Artists, Andy Warhol. There's are great little music video about his life and Pop Art that we used (found here). **Warning, it does contain a Justin Bieber song that caused some uproar in my class, both positive and negative.**

 

Then we looked at Grumpy Cat memes. If you haven't seen Grumpy Cat yet, you need to click here to check him out. Some of the memes are inappropriate, but I found several that I could show the kids and we could get a good laugh out of it. Many students recognized him and had other examples to share with the class. We discussed how Grumpy Cat is a popular icon in today's world. Then I showed them the Marilyn Monroe piece that Andy Warhol did with multiple drawings of Marilyn, each colored a differently and explained that we would be doing this with Grumpy Cat.
We then spent two class periods dividing our paper into four equal squares and drawing our Grumpy Cats (directions courtesy of Kathy Barbro). During the second class, we took a break to review what we knew about the color wheel and Primary and Secondary colors. Then we talked about color schemes. We focused on Monochromatic, Analogous, and Complementary color schemes. Students were instructed that each cat had to feature a different color scheme that they had just learned. The fourth cat could be colored whatever they want. We're still in the process of finishing these. I will post some of the finished product next week!

 

In other news, our first grade students finished their Louise Nevelson sculptures and they look awesome! Check them out!