T'was the Week Before Halloween

This past week I didn't really want to start anything new, AND I wanted to get all my classes aligned. You know- all of the same grade levels working on ALL the same lessons. AND I knew my students would want to have a little fun for Halloween. (They should have fun every week except.... NOW we have EOC's.)   Below you will see what my students were up to last week.

My 4th and 5th graders learned how to make pop-up cards! A really BIG SHOUT OUT to Matthew Reinhart, (Google him) a paper engineer and author of MANY incredible Pop-Up books. I was extremely fortunate to take a workshop with him at my state conference.

Basic directions for this card are as follows. Fold paper in half, like a book. On the folded edge or crease draw 2 lines as shown in the first photo. Cut the lines.

 

 Then fold the cut section up, flip over and fold again, you are intentionally breaking the fibers on the paper. Then open the card and push the cut section through to the inside to create the pop-up.

   

Now because I really wanted this to take only one session I used this amazing gizmo in the teacher's workroom to have pre-cut shapes available for my students to use. They used double stick tape to attach their shape to the pop-up and used another paper larger than the first sheet for the outside of their card, which they also attached with the double stick tape.

And just look at how creative they were!

   

Some students chose to make their own shape for inside their card.

 

I knew this was a very successful lesson, however the real joy I got from this was when a student brought me in one that he made, on his own, at home.  Oh YEAH!

My 3rd graders are all working on a positive/negative value painting-which I will share in a future post.

My 2nd graders did pumpkin weaving. Really quick and simple. They traced a pumpkin shape, folded it in the middle (I pointed out to them that it was NOT symmetrical as one side of the pumpkin was higher than the other.) After folding the paper, they drew lines as shown in the second photo. They cut on those lines and then they were ready to weave.

    

Kindergarten and first graders had the opportunity to do bats, inspired by the book Stellaluna. Turns out that book is part of the first grade reading series so I gave students a choice.

Since Halloween and costumes were on everyone's mind, I had students draw costumes on their bats.

 

 

I made bat tracers that I cut in half to be able to teach my students a little about symmetry and following directions. 1-Fold paper in half.  2-Place the straight edge on the fold (line of symmetry). 3-Trace around the outside of the body with a pencil (DON'T trace the straight edge). 4-Cut out, open and decorate.  I do caution students to let me check their papers before cutting. Overall it went well.

Of course on Friday we had a storybook parade and here's my costume. Turns out I had a few crayons that quit or fell out of my box. I had NO idea what the kindergarten team had planned!
(By the way-I made my crown using crayon picks from cupcakes that my daughter saved me. I hot glued them to a plastic headband after breaking off the pointy part.) Thinking of wearing the crown on a daily basis-just call me the Queen of Crayons or Miss Crayon........ I'm thinking I had too much sugar.........

 

From what I have seen on Facebook this past week there have been many wonderful costumes used by teachers to inspire and have fun with their students. Way to go! I know I costumed up to see all my student's happy faces!!

With so many wonderful blogs out there-THANKS for reading mine!

1 Point Perspective

 I have seriously avoided teaching 1 point perspective for years!!!!! Never having a high rate of success with this particular lesson I decided my elementary students just weren't ready for it.

Then I saw the new curriculum guide from my district during planning week and was NOT amused. Because that's when I realized I would be stuck doing this lesson with my 4th AND 5th graders. And since we NOW have the dreaded End of Course Exams I had to do this......

I do, on occasion, have students working with rulers in my art room. Not my fault they never seem to remember this when sitting in the Middle School art room. I even have a sign in my room demonstrating how to hold a ruler.  Anyway........ It occurred to me, perhaps, if I scaffold this lesson maybe, just maybe it would be successful. 

   

The first day of this two day lesson (roughly 50 minute classes) we practiced using a ruler.  The sheet on the left with the dots in a cross formation was what my students practiced with. When I subbed a very long time ago I found a copy of that sheet as part of a set of parabolic lines. While it is cool to see straight lines create the illusion of curved lines, I thought it more important to use this sheet to build muscle memory for drawing straight lines.  The above photo on the right was what the students did in their sketchbook to learn what 1 point perspective was all about. I found the worksheet they used here.

 

 

The rest of the class time was spent walking around the room helping students understand how to hold and use the ruler to make straight lines. And helping them with the back lines on the houses they drew in their sketchbooks.

The following week for the actual lesson I wanted my students to do a bird's eye view of a city. I did give them small square and rectangle tracers to use for the tops of the buildings. I modeled for them on my Elmo (a brand of document camera that projects what I'm doing onto the white board). And I'm here to tell you that the scaffolding WORKED!!! I did need to REMIND students to make the dot for the vanishing line, but, overall I was just thrilled with the results. When one of the 5th grade teachers saw what they were doing, she asked that I give her the finished work for a future geometry lesson to count vertices. Oh yeah!!!!

 

 

 

We did take some time discussing why artists, especially architects learn to draw from different perspectives. Students that caught on quickly were helping other students or adding some interesting details to their buildings like helipads, roof pools, one even had a tight rope across 2 buildings, perhaps remembering this lesson from a few years ago? They added windows, signs, cars and traffic lines. 

Lessons that are successful always make for a happy day! Thanks for reading!!

Presenting at the FAEA Conference

Look! Listen! And Learn! was the workshop I presented first thing on Thursday morning, which was the first day of the conference. It wasn't quite as well attended as I had hoped for, but, there were a lot of choices for that time slot. Anyway I thought it went really well.

I started off with the above slide of my power point. On the tables were different words from the list below. This activity is called Conversation Starter and was a way to get some discussions going about the art work shown on the screen. It will help students to learn the correct vocabulary to use when discussing art.

  

Next we did the activity You Be the Critic.

 You can read about how well it went when I did it with my 4th graders here.

Then we were Curating with Postcards.

 

Blogged about doing this with my students here. 

Then I did this activity that I had never done with my students. See the photo on the left for the steps.

 

 

Each person was given an envelope (with a number on it) inside was a postcard of a painting, tracing paper and different colored index cards. I posted the steps, on the power point, one at a time, giving people a few minutes to respond. After all the directions were given people grouped together according to the number on their envelopes. Then they had a discussion based on what they had written down on their index cards. I believe they were a bit surprised to find when they were grouped together it was because they all had the SAME postcard.  

The workshop was scheduled for 2 hours and I am happy to say that the 4 activities I choose worked really well in that time frame. I was able to give out goodies from Faber-Castell, they also provided a door prize for both of my presentations. My suitcase weighed a ton with all the swag I packed.

Also gave out pins from the Art of Ed and included some info about The Baker Museum and Traveling Exhibits.  To get the goodies I gave out, I emailed representatives  from those companies beforehand.

 

My presentation on blogging which I titled Born to Blog on Friday was very well attended. I used the power point that I made for the Carousel of Bloggers that I was a part of at the NAEA in New Orleans. I did add a few informational slides that were helpful for actually starting a blog.

 

There was a lot of great feedback from people and I hope I inspired a few of them to start their own blog.

I really enjoyed presenting.  I attended a President's Reception and got to mingle with Karen Noble, our outgoing President, and our new President Nicole Crane along with the other presenters. I even got this awesome certificate and a nice thank-you note.

And on another note- My niece, who is a math teacher up north, decided to Google: Storybook Character Costumes for Teachers and look what she found! ME in the second row! You can learn how I made that costume here  and what book inspired it! 

 

Thanks for reading!! Would love to hear from people who have presented at conferences. What did you present? How was your experience? Would you do it again?