Middle School art journals.....with visual metaphors......2016-2017 first post of the year!

 

The first 9 weeks of school is almost over and we have so much to share! We start our middle school students off with a hand-bound sketchbook to compile their sketches, thoughts, brainstorming, reflections and feedback throughout their time in art class.

 

This year we once again chose a very difficult stitch, the Coptic Stitch. It's incredible to see how much progress these kids make once they get the hang of it. I don't know if they love making them but it sure is a learning journey! I tell them that they are going to be driving a car in a few short years so they need to get used to completing difficult tasks now ;).

 

We had a long discussion and viewing art session about visual metaphors. The kids were then challenged to choose a metaphor and illustrate it for their journal cover.

 

Many in process journal covers on the dry rack.

Ah! The gorgeous stitching!!! How I love to look at them on our shelves!!!

;) Love this kid!!!

Completed journals....folded, measured, hole punched, stitched, metaphors chosen and illustrated and then adhered onto the covers. Lengthy, glorious, process.

I swoon!

This student always impresses me with his ideas and work ethic. This is his illustrated metaphor cover.

Here is a sketch from inside of his journal for an upcoming project.

Blank pages, meticulously stitched to lay flat when the journal is open.

The back of his journal. Fantastic work!!!!

Fraction Pillows (1st-5th)

Whew- we are wrapping up spring break and I realize that I haven't posted about projects we made back in November......

Luckily I already wrote up a description of this project for our S.M.A.T.H. night where these fraction pillows were displayed so I'm just going to cut and paste ;).

Art and math intersect almost continuously although it usually goes unnoticed. For this project we focused on quilting and emphasized how much quilting involves using fractions to build a quilt design. The hope is for the students to independently see math concepts in much of the art that they make.

First we reviewed or were introduced to fractions based on their grade level standards. We completed worksheets for practice before we worked with the fabric. Next we collected our fabric and planned our quilt design on a template. Some grades were given a fraction and had to create their design around that fraction. Other grades created their design first and then worked with the fractions within their design when it was complete. Finally, we adhered their fabric down to our quilt square and then stuffed our pillows!

Stuffed felt animals from Miller and Morrison's classes (Jr. Great Books extension)

Loved, loved ,loved this felt animal project that I did with my son's first grade class. I was able to read one of the stories out of his Jr. Great Books manual and I absolutely LOVED the story. Its a folk tale from India, "The Mouse and the Wizard".



After the class had read, discussed  and studied the story with their teachers, I was able to follow up with this extension activity. We talked about inferring while we are reading and the emotions of the characters. The children picked one of the characters from the folk tale and recreated the character with felt. The challenge was to infer from the text what emotion the character was feeling and try to show that feeling in their stuffed animal.
The results were precious!!

Preliminary sketch of the character they chose from the story.

Starting to cut pieces of felt.

Constantly using our preliminary sketches as our guides.

Elementary Ojos de dios......

 Elementary began making Ojos similar to the middle school students. We started with looking at several works of art. We discussed what feeling or emotion we felt when we looked at the art work. We talked about how the color in each art work was effecting our feelings. If the color was different, would we have a different feeling about the art work?

Our students use the vocab program Wordly Wise (love it!!). I compiled lists of emotion/feeling words from their grade specific Wordly Wise curriculum. Just like the middle school students, they chose one word and then brainstormed 5 colors that reminded them of their word (in art class we call these "color connections").

An example of their brainstorming sheet.

  

 After they had made 5 color connections to their Worldy Wise word, the kids made many Ojos de Dios with only these 5 colors. They mapped out pattern plans before they started working. Like the middle school students, the kids will eventually build a large piece by gluing their individual Ojos together.

Hard at work!

Typical day at the "yarn store" table.

Thank heavens for gallon plastic bags!! I use them to store so much of the kid's work in progress.

A very hard working 5th grade student grouping her Ojos together.

Middle school Ojos continued.....

A clever way the kids were figuring out how to stabilize their larger Ojos pieces.

Love all of the baby Ojos in the center!

 

Filming their stop motion videos.