Friday, November 8, 2013

120. I asked if they'd like to take a break from the self-portraits to work on their background for the Discovery of Puerto Rico Celebration. Their theme is "Coming to the Mainland" so we decided to show New York City, which is the main port for many Puerto Ricans coming to live here. The students looked at images of the skyline of New York City and they were thinking about drawing or painting the buildings.  I showed them the shapes in the buildings and asked if they'd rather use paper to save time.  They decided that was a good direction to take.  They chose black and gray for the buildings and placed them in different configurations, like a tetris board, across the paper.  Next, we'll add "beautiful stuff" for windows (glitter, jewels, foam squares) and we'll paint the water.

116 is still coloring the bricks on the school and church for their mural.  I wanted to get them thinking about where to go next, so I asked some questions and tried to engage them in conversation.  This group is sometimes tough to get to open up- there is a language barrier, as they are native Spanish speakers and they sometimes struggle to explain things to me in English, and i think they have a fear of saying the "wrong answer" because they lack experience with open ended questions.  I keep repeating that there is no wrong answer when I ask them to talk to me, that I'm learning about this community with them and our questions will make our exploration stronger.

Mrs. R- Tell me what we're doing again.
S1- We are drawing a school and a building.
Mrs. R- Is it a regular building?
S2- It's a church!
Mrs. R- Why are we making these?
S1- To put around our classroom.
S2- For our class.  So it can look beautiful.
Mrs. R- Why these buildings?
S2- We're learning to be better artists.
S1- We're showing our school to show what we have in common as a class, in the building.
S2- We're making part of Buffalo. Part of a community!
 Mrs. R- Tell me about this community.
S2- We are drawing it, and our school.
S3- We're trying to make it so you can recognize it.
S4- We also see cars and buses and people- we need to make them.
S2- There are a lot of buildings in this community. We see animals sometimes. I saw a reindeer.
S5- You did not see a reindeer.  They live in the forest!
Mrs. R- Do you think it was a reindeer?
S2- I saw a deer. It had big horns.
Mrs. R- There are deer around, so it's possible.  (I interjected here because I saw that S2 was getting defensive and the other kids weren't accepting of his suggestion that he saw a deer.  I saw a deer as a product of roadkill once on the way in, so I do believe he saw a real deer.)
Mrs. R- Why are we making this again?
S6- We are doing this so we can know this area better.
Mrs. R- After we finish our mural, what can we go from there?
S5- I think we should put it on the school walls so everyone can see it.
S2- We can show the principal.
S5- We should draw the principal, too.
S2- I think we should go to the church when it's winter.  We can show them the mural.
S5- Maybe they will give us hot cocoa! <laughs> We should draw the principal and vice principals.

108- Another small group working on the clay community.  I have one student in today's group who really loves the clay and experiments and creates with it in a way that is deeper than his classmates.  He comes from another continent, literally, so he must have some stored visions or experiences that are different. Or maybe he's just really creative with clay. He made our zoo entrance last time, creating an arch instead of a building.  Today, he started with the goal of building a house.  This house started as an arch, too, but then he added a back wall. The house was hut-like at this point, and he added some textured squares to the ceiling to create the look of tiles.  The group was talking about his zoo entrance, and then he decided that the hut looked more like a cave.  He put a "cage" door on the front and decided that it would be the "Bear House" at the zoo.

The tiles on the roof of the house. 

Detail of the stones of the bear house.

More bear house details

The front of the bear house, with the fence.

We had a few more buildings added to the community today.

The corner store. 

A tiny car wash station.

When I went to drop them off, I saw an amazing medical office building created out of blocks.

This medical office is awesome.

They are waiting in line to see the doctors.

This is the window where you check out (or in?)  Someone put their baby on the counter.

The check-out line is long! 

This class is also creating a paper community on the hallway wall, in addition to our 3D community.  It's huge and the students at the art station add more details every day.  It is "Spooky Village" because they started it Halloween week and the students had Halloween on their minds!

Spooky Village

112. I am so excited about the mural they are painting for the Discovery of Puerto Rico Day Celebration.
The image speaks for itself. First and second grade self-contained class.

Off to a great start! 

It runs the length of the studio!

103, preschool.  We made the armature for our masks and started to papier mache them. I used balls of paper and showed the students how to roll it, then we just threw on a piece of tape to hold it and cut the eye holes for the kids.  A few students made it to the papier mache stage. They LOVED it.

 104, kindergarten.  The students' theme for Puerto Rico Day is "Many People, One Culture." I wanted the ideas to come from the students, so I showed them pictures of Taino Indians, the Spanish during the colonial period and African people. I told them how people who looked very differently lived together on the island. They thought this was really cool and we looked at our skin color to see how different we all are. One student said, "We should paint people with different skin colors to show how everyone looks different!"