5th grades Monochromatic Paintings and a Chameleon...

My desk... all day... all week...  It's been busy in the art room this week!  Kindergarten has been painting/stamping hearts, 1st and 2nd grades have been designing snowflakes with shapes and lines in oil pastel and painting them with liquid water colors, 1st is adding some glitter to their finished pieces and 2nd is doing salt water color with theirs.  Third is working on 1 point perspective, 4th is finishing up their landscapes and moving into perspective and 3-D form, 5th is working on monochromatic night scenes. 

See this little guy? He's on my desk in the first picture. I needed a new tape dispenser for this year and found these guys at Staples this summer.  The kids LOVE him! They think it's hysterical that his tongue is the tape and he is licking a bug with it! ( the gray thing is a bug with white wings, you can't see his face from this angle but he has a freaked out expression on his face!) I have one at both schools... the kids say he needs a name... hhmmmm.....

My supply table "over flowith " with paints this morning. Paints and supplies for 5th grade to finish working on their monochromatic night skies this morning. Tomorrow's 5th's are just starting them tomorrow, they are so behind because of snow days, an assembly and a half-day for a teacher in-service. This will be the second time I have seen them this month! This afternoon i cleared the table and set it up so the 4th's that were still painting could come back and finish up and the kids that were done could practice their buildings at the tables with out having to navigate around the paints! 

These are some of the finished night scenes 5th grade has been working on. The kids are really happy with their finished pieces. 

Notice the difference in the two blues? These last two pictures with the brilliant blues are made with blue sax versa Temp. ( LOVE that tempera! The colors mix so nicely! ) Well, I ran out of the blue Versa temp so I had go into my tempera stash and use some Sargent Art Time I had from last year. Boy! What a difference in quality and color! Even the kids commented on the differences! I was scraping paint out of the Versa Temp bottle so a few kids could fix a couple of spots! 

Lately I have not been happy with some of the free-time choices that 5th grade has been making. I feel a lot of them are just wasting paper instead creating a free-time drawing that they would want to keep...  so that changed today...  I made up Art Journals for my 5th grades. Each has a cover page for their name that they can also design, inside the cover page are tons of ideas that they can use as a starting point for drawing ideas. There are 10 blank pages for them to create on. I showed them several examples of journaling I found on Pinterest. We talked about how an Art Journal is a visual record of their thoughts, ideas, interests... I compared them to writing journals they keep in their classrooms.  They are to fill each page and they should not be wasting their pages.  So far the two classes that have started using them are taking them seriously. I was happy to see them being much more thoughtful in their drawing choices! We'll see how it goes.  I saved them in the plastic ziploc with their Art Passports and told them they are to use them when they are done early.  

I hope every one has a great weekend!

Mrs. "C"  :)

Assessments to the Left, Projects to the Right....

What a wacky week!!!  I've been trying to finish up mid-assessments with my SGO groups and my K-2 have been working on their giant class Hearts of Kindness for our school's Kindness and justice week for Martin Luther King's birthday.  I was inspired by this pin and this pin. More on what we did with these when we are done with it next week.  

On Deep Space Sparkle Patty recently offered a free download of a 2014 calendar she made up.  It's a great calendar for school or home to keep track of your daily happenings! I printed it up , stapled it together and attached it to a background. It's hanging behind my desk on my window at school. Sorry for the darkish picture... it was snowing again yesterday and it was dark outside. 

It was FREEZING out this week! Monday evening through Wednesday saw below zero temperatures and 15- 20 below zero F wind chills here in Northern NJ!  My school and many more had delayed openings on both days.  I was getting used to school starting at 10:00 a.m. everyday! 

I have my 2nd round observation coming up on Tuesday next week. This one is an announced observation so I had some pre-observation questions I had to answer and upload to my account on Teachscape for my administrator to view before Thursday a.m. so we could have a pre-conference meeting on Thursday.

Here are the questions I had to answer: ( ready for this? )

1.)  To which part of your curriculum does this lesson relate?

2.)  How does this learning "fit" in the sequence of learning for this lesson?

3.)  Briefly describe the students in this class, including those with special needs.

4.)  What are your learning outcomes for this lesson? What do you want the students to understand?

5.)  How will you engage the students in the learning? What will you do? What will the students do? Will the students work in groups, or individually, or as a group? Provide any worksheets the students will be using.

6.)  How will you differentiate instruction for different individuals and groups of students in the class?

7.)  How and when will you know whether the students have learned what you intend?

8.)  Is there anything that you would like me to specifically observe during this lesson?

Yeah, all that...  I felt like I was back in college working on an assignment for a class! I was at my PLC Monday afternoon when I was reading all the questions, my other administrator happened to be present and I was like... OMG!!! They smiled in what I took as agreement and told me to keep it brief. So I did, but in a way that I feel was very professionally written, siting curriculum standards and specific IEP modifications where needed. Seeing that everything I upload to this site can be viewed by any administrator in the district including the superintendent, I am making sure I am keeping any "snarkyness" to myself...  there's a time and a place for everything...

This so looks like a beautiful abstract sunset to me! It's one of the 4th graders mixing plate from the landscapes they have been working on.  I have had them mixing all the colors for their paintings and they are creating the most incredible color values!!! How I wish we had so much longer than 30 minutes for class because they were so involved I hated stopping them to clean up!

The lesson was inspired by the beautiful paintings that Laura, from Painted Paper had her students create earlier this year.  If you have never been to her site go visit! Her students create gorgeous pieces!  More on what my 4th grades did with this lesson when they are complete!

I do love Crayola tempera but due to the fact that I can no longer afford it in my budget I have tried the Sax Versa Temp this year and I am very, very satisfied with it's texture and mixing properties!  

The paints are looking a little nasty at the moment!  :)  They show that great creativity and involvement in the objective that was going on! :)

The students loved trying different combinations of colors to get different values of brown! As I was circulating the room I could hear them all saying things like," Wow! Look at the color I just got! " and sharing with each other what colors they combined to create their loved colors! Boring assessments became a thing of the past and creativity was alive in the art room once more! ( I know that the purpose of these assessments are to be able to track my students learning ( and how well I am teaching them ) but seriously from a creative standpoint, they really are boring...  :(  The kids keep asking WHY? This is ART! We are supposed to be creating, not taking tests! 4th and 5th grade can be very insightful at times...) 

My 5th grades are finishing up their mid-assessments and a surrealism project this week. Next week they also begin their journey into everything color! They are going to be working with monochromatic values. This project is always a favorite! I have done it with 2nd to 5th grade and it's always a hit! The finished pieces are always stunning! 5th grade saw the beginning example on the board this week and is anxious to start! :)  

Happy to see the drying racks again filled with drying paintings! All is good in the art room once again! 

It's actually rainy ( very rainy ) and 50 degrees F here in NJ today! A stark difference to the past week! I'm off to go put on a pot of sauce for supper tonight and work on some creative projects that have been sitting in limbo all week...  tomorrow I have to get my lesson plan and all my documents for the lesson together to up load onto Teachscape before Monday for my observation Tuesday.  Hope you all have a creative weekend! 

Mrs. "C"  :)

Inspired by the Art of Andy Goldsworthy - 5th Grade

Collaborative student piece

One cloudy (and later very rainy) morning a class of enthusiastic fifth graders, their teacher and their art teacher went into the woods and created art in nature from nature.

Before we left on our adventure the class became very familiar with the art of artist,
Andrew Goldsworthy.

They were fascinated by how he would build these arches!

I found several video clips of him working in nature on pieces.

If you do a google search there are many to choose from.

As the kids worked some amazing pieces began to form...

Each piece evolved...

This one was a snake curled up in the grass...

I saw a dragon's head...

They worked with colors...

These students created a snake out of leaves that curled around the tree and branches.

The only thing holding them together is water.

They were amazed how well spraying water on the leaves held them together!

Only natural items could be used...

Water and earth clay were used as adhesives...

This is the leaf snakes face...

Some of the kids really wanted to create a stone piece but were limited by what was available in the space we were in...

I love the use of the smaller, lighter color stones in the spaces between the large rocks.

The students were able to create some great pieces before the rain started to come down upon us later in the morning.

By doing their own pieces the kids realized that sometimes an idea works and sometimes it does not.

An idea is an evolution of trial and error.

The school year is quickly coming to a close...

We have one full week and six half days and then we are done!  

In that time I have SGO paperwork to finish up, two rooms to straighten up, end of the year paperwork,  

finish handing back student work, final grades for 900 plus students and project planning for a summer art program.  This summer I will be working with our school's summer care program to teach art to our summer care kids one day a week. The ages range from K-8th grade.  I know all the kids and it will be  creating art for arts sake! (yeah!) I'm excited to start.  I am planning a theme for each week.  Our first week will be Art in Motion!  

Mrs.C  :)

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5th Grade iPhone & iPod Sketches

My fifth grades recently finished up their pencil sketches of iPhones and iPods.

The lesson was the old re-draw the missing part of the picture....  One of my main objectives of the lesson was getting the kids to look, I mean "REALLY" look, at what they were drawing.  We spent one class on how to look at what they were drawing.  I kept saying, "Look at it, draw, look back at it again at your sketch and compare."  So many of them found that they were not really looking at what was in front of them as they were just assuming what was there.  That was a big "AH HAH!" moment for the majority of them.  The other main objective was to get them to create all their color with just their pencil, lights, mediums and darks.  Now mind you, we were using student grade #2 pencils since we don't have the luxury of really nice drawing pencils.  However, they did great!

I gave them a choice of either the picture of the iPhone or the iPod.  I told them that I chose both pictures carefully and that they both had their challenging points.  So many thought that drawing the iPhone was going to be a piece of cake!  Once they started, they realized that it was not just a big rectangle!  I went over how to get the apps to look flat, that was something a lot of them had trouble with.  Once I demonstrated and visually showed them in small groups how to draw the angles on how to see all the parallel lines again they had another, "AH HAH!" moment!

These took us about three to four 30 minute classes to draw.

When they were done I had them fill out a self-assessment.

I'm really happy with how they turned out.

The kids put a lot of effort and pride into them.  

Have a great week!

Mrs.C  :)

April is National Autism Awareness Month

 

April is Autism Awareness Month...  I work with and have worked with many Autistic children over my 25 years teaching art.   They range from kindergarten to 5th grade and are on the Autistic Spectrum in many varying degrees. 

 

Last week one of my 5th grades was away on a trip, so I made sure to tell the Autism teacher in our 3-5 school to send down the two boys who are mainstreamed into the class for art, even though the rest of the class was away.  I told her the whole class was welcome to come down if she wanted!  Five of my favorite kids showed up for art with their Para-Professionals!  We only had a short time and a couple of the kids were upset because we had changed their routine...

 

Change is very difficult for an Autistic child and the littlest thing can upset them.  One was upset because they passed the door for the lunch room and he thought it was time to eat! Sorry no food!  Just extra art!  :)

I pulled out my painted paper scrap box and had the kids create these beautiful painted paper flowers!  The ladies that work with them drew out the petal shapes and had the kids cut them out and glue them onto their flowers center how ever the child wanted.  They came out beautiful and the teacher hung them in the hallway outside their classroom!  Sometimes the project that is last minute and off the cuff comes out great and these did! 

 

 

 

 

Do the flower's centers look familiar?  We have started to recycle these into other projects!  I love when I can get these guys together for a group lesson!  Each child in the group verbalizes in a different way so there was a lot of chatter and happy working noises in the room!  :)

We are finally on Spring Break!  Yeah!!!  I will be back after vacation with more lessons from my room.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter/Passover! 

Mrs.C  :)