Kinder mini-color wheel necklaces

Love this face!!!

counting and recording how many of each color beads they used

 ;) Kindergarten!

This is one of the lessons that we repeat each year for our kinders. We work color theory and color mixing into their projects often the first semester. Making these mini- color wheels gives them the opportunity to mix colors (with clay), work teeny tiny, learn about and replicate a color wheel and practice stringing beads.

With the clay they mix all of the secondary colors from the primary colors so they have six colors in total. Then they press little pieces in the order of a color wheel into a bottle cap that has been drilled with a tiny hole and tied with elastic thread. After they dry Slats and I mod podge them to make sure they don't fall out later. The next class period they string beads on to create the necklace. As they are beading we ask them if they are currently stringing a primary color or a secondary color? If they have an orange bead in their hand we ask the to tell us how to make the color orange? After they complete their necklaces we have them count and record how many beads they used of each color (as we frantically try to tie all of the necklaces before their class period is over ;)).

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.

Middle School Ojo de Dios (God's Eyes)

An Ojo de dios is woven with yarn and wood sticks. They are gorgeous to look at and so therapeutic to make. I'll get into the history and origination of Ojos in another post......many of you may remember making them in grade school or in camp ;). 

We started the project with our middle school students. Their goal was to pick an emotion or feeling word (one word only) and then make connections to colors that reminded them of their word. The connections were supposed to be personal. 

For example- if my word was "confident", one of my color connections would be the color black because the San Antonio Spurs logo is black and I am confident in their ability to win. The kids made several color connections to their emotion word. When their brainstorming was done they began to plan out patterns for their Ojos de Dios. Eventually they would be gluing their individual Ojos together to make a larger piece. After that piece was complete, they would then make a stop  motion animation movie with it ;).

 

A middle school student's first group of Ojos de Dios.

Another middle school student's Ojos layout starting to form.

Beautiful! Beginning to glue them together.

Just a teeny tiny bit of insight into the massive amount of yarn Mrs. Slats and I have been untangling these past couple of months :).

How I spent my son's soccer practices from October to December.....untangling and rolling yarn into little, neat balls.

A picture of one student filming her stop motion animation- so fun!!!