Week of February 9- 13, 2015

Monday:
Today was a great day!

First grade has been studying the human heart. They are very interested in how it works. I'm working with a second group right now and between Friday and today, they had some interesting conversations:

Jayden- The heart pumps blood.
Emesiel- The heart is for breathing.
Jangel- It helps to sort your blood.
Mrs. Rose- Can you explain?
Jangel- Your heart helps your blood sort through your body. It goes around your body so you can move.
Eliseo- You would be like a zombie.
Issac- You would be flat.
Jayden- When it beats fast, it means you took your breath and it means you're running and out of breath.
Jangel, describing the 3D image of the heart- It's like having a baby- it's stomach is big and small and it looks like it's dancing and those are arms!
Jayden- It doesn't look like a heart.
Eliseo- That's not a real heart- that's a Valentine heart. This is a real heart.
Jayden- There is blood in that.
Mrs. Rose- What do you wonder about the heart?
Cherish- I wonder what the white parts are.
Jayden- Are those boogers?
Mrs. Rose- It says that those are valves.
Jayden- What are valves?
We click on an app that has a video describing parts of the heart.
Jayden- They open and close!
Mrs. Rose- How big do you think your heart is?
Jangel- Like a lemon!
Eliseo- Or apple.
Max- Or an orange.
Jayden- A grown up... a baby... The baby's heart beats faster.

They came back in today to work on creating 3D models of the heart using clay.

Jangel- This is like cutting peanut butter!
Mrs. Rose- What do you wonder about?
Jangel- I wonder what's making it beat.
Jayden- You breathe. It's the air.
Jangel- But what is making the air move?
Max- It's because the heart is beating.
Mrs. Rose- That moves the air?
Max- Yeah.
Eliseo- I wonder why babies' heart beat faster.
Issac- I thought the heart was pink. That's red. That one is pink.
Mrs. Rose- What could that mean?
Eliseo- It's a zombie heart!
Issac- No! I think it means that that one is maybe dead.
Mrs. Rose- What is something you notice now that you didn't notice before you started studying the heart?
Denali- I never knew that the heart has tubes!
Jayden- I never knew the heart was red and white and the tubes were white.
Jangel- That's a good observation.
Mrs. Rose- I like how you said that, Jangel. That's a nice thing to say to a friend.
Eliseo- I never knew the heart looks brown.
Jangel- I didn't know there was a little long tube in the bottom.
Jayden- Oh! Now I know why there's tubes in the heart! It's because the air needs to come in and then come out again and air keeps coming in!

They measured the clay using a non-traditional unit of measurement- their hands.

So festive! Hearts for Valentine's Day! 

The kindergarten students are working on drawing animals from their farm trip in a realistic manner. We are being detectives looking for lines.

The second graders are working on drawing symmetric balance. Esmeralda suggested that we paint the copies of their drawings before they roll them for the next step of the project- turning the copies of the work into a 3D sculpture using a rolled paper technique. I thought this was a great idea, so that's what 116 will be doing next. 

Pre-K is exceeding my expectations with their progress on this current project.  The first drawing in the following photographs is a free-hand, non-observational drawing of their favorite animal. The second is a tracing of a photograph of their animal, completed on acetate and colored with oil pastels. The third is a completely free-hand observational drawing (NO TRACING) of the same photograph. They looked at the lines they traced and they looked at the photograph. We now have line detectives ready to draw anything from observation! 

I love the addition of grass in the middle one. You can tell he
was really looking at the photograph. 

This one isn't finished, but look at the contour line drawing of his
third piece! It's going to be spectacular. I'm so excited about it! 

The dark shaded spot is the first fish. The third fish is almost the same
exact size as the photo. I'm really happy with the progress of this student!

Look at that final buffalo! Amazing! 

Tuesday:

I spent the morning at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center with the pre-K students. They were interested in drawing the animals they saw in the landscape paintings and picked up on the idea of "painting noise" in Charles Burchfield's work.

S- I really think the painting is real!
L- no, it's fake. 
D- I see black things.
Docent- What is this part?
D- a gate! 
S, to the docent- are you touching it?
Docent- No, I'm just pointing to it. (The painting is called Summer Afternoon.) What do you hear in this painting?
L- bzzzzzzzzz
Docent- Can you see the noise? Where does the noise come from?
L- the bees in the hive. The hive is in those trees. 
Docent- What kind of weather is this? 
S- warm!

As we were getting ready to leave, Dr. Lopez's class noticed tracks in the snow. They couldn't tell me what kind of animal made the tracks, but they knew something was out there, living in the winter wonderland. Animals who live in a winter wonderland has been their theme, so it was neat that we saw these rabbit tracks. 

116 decided that they wanted to paint their symmetry copies before turning them into paper sculptures. I thought it was a great idea, so they've been working on getting them painted so we can start the 3D asymmetric part of the lesson soon. 

Wednesday: 

The first graders took a trip to the Albright-Knox. The hallway we enter in is the hallway is the hallway in which our school's exhibit is on display.

S- I know this work. I saw it before. OH! It's ours!  It's from our school!

E- That's a picture of our school! 

Soon, a chorus of "That's my work!" or "That's me in the picture!" could be heard as the students saw their artwork and photographs on the walls of the museum.  It was really awesome to be a part of that experience. 

The tour was really fun, too. The students were so engaged with the artwork. They're pros at visiting art museums now, and I rarely have to direct them. They are very interested in the paintings and sculptures and throw a lot of vocabulary back at the docents. They make me proud. 

Pre-K has been working on drawing animals by looking at the lines.  We traced photographs, after doing a pre-drawing, so that they could see what lines they'll need to make in order to create their animals. 

Thursday:

This has been a week of field trips for Bilingual Center School 33. On Thursday, we visited the Burchfield-Penney Art Center with the kindergarteners. They were on fire!  They pointed out interpretations of paintings that I'd never considered before. They saw an underwater scene in a Burchfield landscape and after they said that I couldn't see the painting the same way again! And they saw a scary pig face in another Burchfield landscape and once they pointed it out, I could see it, too.