Wednesday, November 13, 2013

118- I invited the group who drew the church to come into the studio to create a 3D model of the church.  They were really excited to work with clay.  Since they'd had exposure to it in their other art classes, they didn't need to play as much and were pretty much ready to build right away.  I brought one student from the previous group to serve as a leader.  He not only gave them pointers that the other group had learned and discovered, but he taught them about being kind, polite and sharing.  "We're a team and we're not here to play. We have to work together if we want to get this done." It was really neat to see a kid take leadership responsibilities so seriously, but even more outstanding was watching the other students react to him in a positive, polite manner.  This class is really learning to work cooperatively and I love that we're able to offer experiences to encourage that at School #33. They are going to be better human beings and better 21st Century workers.

108- I brought a small group in to work on the community again.  I think almost everyone is finished or nearly finished with their buildings.  When everything is dry, I'll fire the pieces and we'll glaze them.  While we're waiting to get them back from the kiln, we'll begin our map to lay the pieces on. I'm going to let them decide how they want to create this, but I'm pretty sure they'll want to paint it. I haven't done much, if any, painting with this group, so it will be a good experience for us.

Our community has a buffet and a Walmart now.

Making a tree

This tree is "still not right." We'll work on it again tomorrow!

116, second grade- After visiting the computer lab yesterday, we were prepared with images of local, living things that the students wanted to add to their classroom mural.  One student chose a tree.  I told him he could have these tall boxes I'd been saving from rolls of paper.  He stacked them and then looked at me.  I said, "Any of these materials are yours to use.  Make a tree."  He was still doubtful, so I asked him what he'd like to use.  "The brown paper," he said.  I let him cut pieces from the big roll of brown paper.  He wrapped the boxes in the paper, then looked at me again.  "Make your tree. Use what you need." That's all I told him.  He cut green and tried to cut small leaves to attach, but it looked funny. Then he ended up cutting a bigger sheet of green paper and wrapping the box at the top with green.  "It's still not right!" He complained. I told him he could come back tomorrow and work on it some more and he thanked me enthusiastically. He was really excited to make something on such a large scale and for the greater good of his classroom environment.  The other students in this group worked on drawing their objects from observation.  We had a butterfly (how fitting, after seeing Austin's Butterfly) a lady bug, a rabbit and a rose bush.  The lady bug is an example of critiquing-gone-right.  I feel that we need to work more on the butterfly, rose bush and the rabbit.  The girl drawing the rabbit was really struggling to learn to see the lines and I think she needed a break after only getting the ears finished (correctly.) I could see that this was a lot for her to take in, so I hope with a little rest, she'll come back tomorrow and it will click for her.

First, he drew the lady bug the way he thought lady bugs should look.

On his second draft, he drew what he saw in the photograph.

Then, he used the iPad to try to match up the colors. He wanted a yellow lady bug, not a red one.
This was important to him.

103, preschool- We used papier mache on our Taino masks.  The preschoolers loved this.  One of the students had been able to use the papier mache last time, so his piece had hardened and we passed it around as an example. They were so excited that their pieces would harden up like this.  Papier Mache with four-year-olds is probably the messiest thing I've ever seen, but it was so much fun.

Awesome masks!

Awesome mess!

102, kindergarten. Mrs. H asked me to push in this afternoon to help the students draw characters for their contribution to the Discovery of Puerto Rico festival. The students were given large sheets of paper and asked to brainstorm ways to draw the characters.  They decided to trace one student per group, so that the characters would be large enough to be seen from the stage. They then added the characters' faces and costumes so that the characters would be easily identified. They will be painting these characters tomorrow.