Week of September 29- October 3, 2014

I have neglected the blog this week, but it wasn't for lack of interesting things to publish. I've been busy developing a documentation template and logo for our documentation during my usual blog writing time. In addition to that, I've set up 22 field trips over the year for the four grade levels I teach, which was very time consuming.  I hope to catch up on our week in this post.

New logo for documentation

First grade and kindergarten students are still hard at work completing their portraits. I've taken some students in to complete a second draft, if I felt their first draft wasn't indicative of their true abilities. Here are some strong portraits which were both solid on the first draft!

Second grade has been busy improving their observational drawing skills.  We took the students outside for protected drawing time and then had a critique of the work. After the critique, we had the students draw potted plants inside.  We had some breakthroughs and the ones who were already advanced at this have now taken it to the next level. 

This student even used shading!

You can tell the moment a person "gets" observational drawing.

This is amazing.

This student is starting to understand space and
perspective already!

Pre-K students are working on different projects. 106 is continuing portraits, but we are almost finished and will head into an observational drawing/nature unit involving the senses next. 101 is starting this senses part and 103 is well into it. 

We started the unit with a nature walk to the backyard of our school. I've written about that already- we saw a snake, butterfly and caterpillar.  Since then, the students drew individual recollections about the experience. We watched Austin's Butterfly, about the power of critique, and the students created observational drawings based on photographs of the creatures we saw. Next, they made a huge snake, and a large butterfly and caterpillar. We traced the photographs on the overhead (tracing is great for fine motor skills at this age) and now they are painting it.  We looked closely at the colors in the butterfly.

Teacher- What colors do we need?
L- White, black and orange.

Teacher- What about here? <Points to yellow>

L2- AND YELLOW! 

Teacher- Is this orange the same as this orange.

They look at it. 

L2- No! It's more yellow.

We walk over to the painting shelf and select paints. Orange and yellow were easy. 

Teacher- Is this orange right?

A- No!  It needs to be lighter!
Teacher- We might need to mix some paints, then. What colors do we need?

L2- Orange and yellow.

We mix the paint.

Teacher- Is this right now? 

L2- NO! It's not light enough. It needs more yellow.

She mixes the yellow in.

L2- This is right. 

Shades of orange

We keep our studio clean and take care of our supplies on our own.