Ojo De Dios (god's eyes) completed projects

 Just a very few of the hundreds of outstanding Ojo de Dios projects in their final state. I loved seeing these come together so much! Making Ojos is a meditative, relaxing process. Other than the craziness of keeping the yarn untangled :) it was art making bliss!!

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!

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 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!!!

Art Journals- Personification

This year one of our first projects is making our art journals again. We keep our brainstorming, reflections, take notes, write and more in our journals throughout the year.

We were smart this year and asked for washi tape on our supply list ;)- but we still blew through it!

Because we had been discussing personification due to Willis (the art Wagon), I kept running with the idea of turning objects into humans. For their journal cover the kids had to select an object that they have affection for (no animals- I wanted them to chose something inanimate) and they had to personify that object. They couldn't use markers or draw...they could only use tape. I taught them a trick to cut small areas using parchment paper and Mrs. Slats figured out that if you stack the tape a few times it made small pieces much easier to cut. Between both of those methods they created some really fantastic details!!

A personified football! Love!

I personified my boom box and I saw him peeking up at me one day covered in hundreds of journals that I was toting to different classes that day....made me giggle ;).

This amazed me- a first grader took a clip art image of cherries, flipped it upside down and turned it into a mouse face- awesome!!!!!!!

I read this book to the kids a few days into the project. It's great!!!

My favorite page in the book ;).