Clay Owls

First grade just finished their clay owls. For the full tutorial click here.

Klimt's Tree of Life

My second graders just finished paintings inspired by Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life. They started by painting a watercolor wash for the background, yellow on most of it with a little bit of brown on the bottom. Next class, we drew the tree together. On the SmartBoard I showed them Klimt's painting and drew on it, emphasizing the Y shape where the tree branches split from the trunk and the way the trunk and branches get skinnier as they move away from the base of the tree.

Once the trees were drawn I showed them how to choose paint brushes based on the needs of their painting. I told them to get a medium sized flat brush and a small round tip brush and showed them how to move the brush from side to side to create a very crisp line with their paint. They took the painting part very seriously, it was actually silent in the room for a while they were so focused!

The final step was to add a few sequins to imitate Klimt's patterns. If I had it to do over (which I do, next year!), I would order sequins that are only circular and/or square. The kids got a bit too focused on the different shapes and lost their focus on their patterns.

Thinking in Pictures

One of my inspirations in my research on the minds of people with Autism is Temple Grandin. She has a couple of books published, one is called "Thinking in Pictures." As an adult with Autism, she writes about how her mind works and how others with Autism think. There was recently an HBO movie made about her, starring Claire Danes (which I hope to watch over break, if my kids will nap at the same time for me). I found this video clip of her speaking at a TED function via The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet. The video is a little long-20 minutes, but will give you a sample of what she talks about in her book, and I assume her movie. If you're interested in how children on the Autism Spectrum think it's a good place to start.

I'm not so sure I like this song, but the video is so creative, and I really enjoyed their versions of so many famous works of art. And what a variety they included!

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

TR Mack-Results

Some of my fourth graders have completed their TR Mack projects. I must admit, that in general I was quite disappointed in the results. A lot of the children did not have the patience required to strategically place the circles around their tree branches. There were, of course a few gems in the bunch. These three are my personal favs. These three artists really worked hard to complete their artwork, and took all of my instructions to heart.

At my other school, we voted on the circles and both classes decided that they did not want to add them. So, if you want to see our Artsonia gallery without circles you can click here.

Shutterfly

If you haven't tried Shutterfly, I highly suggest that you give their services a shot. Over the summer they held a promotion for a free 20 page hard cover photo book, so I opened an account. In addition to getting the book, I got 50 free prints for opening a new account! Their prints are so clear and high quality, I was very impressed and happy with them. Plus, they send a thumbnail printout of each of the images that was printed, which I have used in my work binders to cover them with pictures of my kids while I have to be away from them. It gives me a little smile everytime I see it. The books are phenomenal. I am so happy with them! I ended up getting two (I used my Huggies or Pampers (don't remember which) reward points to get a second free book!), and they are both great. They are hard cover, with a picture of my choosing on the cover. They have a program that automatically adds the pictures, or you can custom make each page to your liking.
Anyway, if you are in the market for an online photography service now is a great time to try Shutterfly. They are currently running a program just for bloggers! Sign up here, post a blog, post on FB or Twitter and get 50 FREE cards! I am hoping to get all of my Christmas cards done with this program!

Action Research

A while back I mentioned that I am in a grad school cohort. We met this past weekend, and had to solidify our plans for our Action Research project. The project is in place of a thesis that a typical graduate program would require. We do our first round of research next semester, examine the results over the summer, and modify our plan if needed. Next fall we do our second round of research in the classroom and complete a presentation of our results in the spring. Then we graduate! Yea! Anyway, I have had a really hard time determining what my topic of research should be. First I thought about comparing the learning styles of boys vs. girls. We have to do a literature review of ten relavant writen works, and all of the lit I found on it was debating the use of segregated schools~all boys and all girls. Not really applicaple, since my schools are not segregated, and won't ever be segregated.

So I changed my idea to working with my children with autism. But that is WAY too broad. I had to narrow it down, and I really struggled with this. What did I want to try with these children? How could I help them find greater success~preferably success that they can transfer into lifelong skills? Finally, I have settled on the Action Research question of "to what extent will implementing storyboards in small groups of children with autism impact student independence?" A mouthfull, right? Basically, I will be creating storyboards~or visual aides for the kids that show them step by step how to complete the projects and clean up after the project. The goals being that the higher functioning children can find independence and possibly start coming to art without an aide to help them, and the lower functioning kids being able to do more of the project on their own. Hopefully the lower functioning kids will be able to use the visual to grab their own supplies, or even need less hand-over-hand help. We'll see where it goes from there! I can see storyboards being used for the lower level grades too.

The other elementary art teachers and I have completed a grant requesting document cameras for our classrooms. If we get this grant, this project will be even easier, as I would be able to record myself creating my example and play it back as often as needed! I completed my first storyboard this morning, and will be trying it with the students this afternoon. I'm a little nervous, but really excited to see how they react!

TR Mack

I found the artist, Tom McCracken of TR Mack Studios through a fellow art education blogger, Ms. Malone. I love his work of vibrant trees and villages that have many dots painted throughout. I was saddened to read that he died in March, 2010 so his Esty page is "on vacation." I plan on emailing his family that left the note on his Esty account and asking if they are planning on making a page devoted to his work and life. My students have really enjoyed looking at his work and are very curious about his life! We have just started his project, but they are all excited about it, and all the other grades that are coming in start class with "who gets to make those trees?!"

After looking at a sampling of TR Mack's paintings and prints, students use analagous colors to create a watercolor wash over the whole paper. I asked them to work the paint until they got rid of the lines and the colors flowed from one to another. Some did great at this, and some did well~but overall I was quite impressed!

The next class period we talked about how to draw a tree successfully. We looked again at TR Mack's examples and I showed them how you can find the letter Y in the branches, and there are never more thantwo branches at any split. I also showed them how to curve the branches if they wanted to make a tree with spiral branchs. Once the trees were drawn, I showed the kids how to use the tip of a flat brush to create a crisp line. They had predicted that we would use markers for the trees because my examples had such crisp lines! I expected the trees to take one class, but they are less than halfway done with them so next class will be finishing up the trees. Finally, they will use different sized dowels to print the circles in the background and between the tree branches.

Here is my in-progress and completed examples of this project. I can't wait to see them finished!

Thanks, Ms. Malone for the heads up on a wonderful artist!

What We're Doing

I feel bad that some people come here for inspiration and all I have been posting is what my CID kids are working on. That's simply because most of what we're working on has already been posting and I don't want to become redundant. Here's what we're up to:

KINDERGARTEN

They just finished their "Kindergarten Kandinsky" projects. We identified shapes and colors in Kandinsky's paintings, and then drew shapes with oil pastels. Next class we watercolored over them.

Learning Targets are:
I can. . .

• recognize shapes in Kandinsky's art
• use oil pastels to draw shapes
• use good painting techniques
  
  

FIRST GRADE

First grade just finished making their "dot" drawings, which can be found here. I did find another book to use with it called Katie's Sunday Afternoon by James Meyhew. A little girl goes into some pointillist paintings in a museum. The kids really liked the story, and I like that it shows reproductions of Seurat, Pissarro, and Signoc.

SECOND GRADE

Second grade is working on their Henri Matisse Goldfish collages, which can be found here. We're making them a bit smaller this year to finish them quicker.

THIRD GRADE

They are creating awesome Laurel Burch Cats, found here. If you're interested in doing it, feel free to use my Prezi, which is here.

FOURTH GRADE

Wow! Finally one I haven't already blogged about! My fourth graders started with "Name Fish." A pretty traditional lesson, I think. I start by telling them it's an IMAGINARY fish. They are asked to draw a fish, add thier name in bubble letters on the body, and use value in every section of the fish with colored pencils. Those are their Learning Targets too.

FIFTH GRADE

Fifth grade is working on Op Art and Rose Windows (at different schools).