Painting the night- Nocturnal Animals Kindergarten painting

 Mmmmmm, I love this kindergarten lesson! Each year the kindergartners study nocturnal animals in their homeroom classes. By the time I do this lesson with them they are nocturnal animal experts! We start our lesson by going "pretend camping". I turn off the lights, set up lanterns and play nighttime noises in the background. We practice visualizing. I read them a story (Little Owl at Night) and they sketch what they visualize in their sketchbook. It's really fun!

After "camping" we launch into a few weeks of learning and practicing different painting techniques to make it look like nighttime. They look through my little library of books that are set at night. We try to figure out how the artist made it look like night, what kind of paint or materials they used, did the artist erase, did they use a resist, etc.  After these lessons the kids pick a nocturnal animal they studied in homeroom and they make a large painting portraying the animal in their nighttime environment. The idea is to use all of their background knowledge (from homeroom class and art class) to create their painting.

Pretend camping and drawing what we visualize in our art journals.

Some of the journal pages with their visualizations.

Beginning our paintings!

Love!!!

Hard at work.

We used glitter watercolor crayons- messy.....but wonderful.

Finishing our paintings by addressing the border and getting them ready to present.

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 ;).

Woodworking Camp!

:) Woodworking camp started this week! My class is so precious!! They make all of the planning I have done to make this camp possible worth every second!!

 

You might not be able to tell from these pictures but we are making wood, fully functioning gumball machines. I can't take credit for the design- I found the instructions on Instructables posted by a high school shop educator. Genius!

 

 Because my kids are elementary aged they certainly couldn't operate a drill press and scroll saw so I prepped all of the gumball bases for them before camp started. Depending on the age level I'm teaching them beginning woodworking skills with a variety of tools. We are also working on understanding simple machines, developing well thought out characters and personification.

 

The first two days of camp have been a lot of prepping, brainstorming and writing. Watching them develop their ideas is always very interesting to me.

 

The following pictures are from Monday's class. The kids designed a woodworking art journal to record their sketches and reflections. They also (very patiently) worked on sanding their gumball machine bases with sandpaper as well as files.

Doing a great job getting the sandpaper in the gumball holes!

Beautiful journals!!

Clever, this student layered the stickers to make those little flowers.

All of the stickers I passed out were a hit ;)!!

Middle school- hand binding with the Coptic stitch

 

 

 

I love middle school!!! These sweet kids were so persistent and expressed such great team work as they decorated, made "signatures" (that is what a group of papers is called in book binding), punched a ridiculous amount of holes ;) and eventually learned how to sew the ancient Coptic stitch to bind their art journals. I think the images speak for themselves with how beautiful they turned out. This project was tough and we jumped right into it the second week of school but they were really positive as they learned!

 

 

An unfinished journal with six signatures ready for binding.

 

I thought about these all summer- art journals!

 This year we made Art Journals and the students became book designers using colored tapes, patterned paper and circle stickers. I wanted to assess how they handled basics like glue sticks, scissors and peeling/sticking tape. I also challenged them to invent an envelope or pouch to hold the "art cash" that they will earn throughout the year. Some kids folded a journal page into a triangle, creating a sleeve that they reinforced with tape to hold their art cash- clever!!

The students will use their art journals very similar to a sketchbook but not just for sketches. They will record brainstorming ideas, self-reflections, sketches and keep written responses in them.

We had a great time designing with the tapes and I realized that I have lots of kiddos proficient in the language of duct tape design ;). I can't wait to see the journals full of ideas and reflections from class!!!