Catching up

 Whew....school is over in less than 2 weeks. Each year seems to go by faster!

Our final middle school unit is a drawing project. Drawing can be intimidating to some kids so we tried to loosen them up with drawing "stations" before they began their drawings. The stations modeled many different ways to make marks, value, line quality, etc. They also included images of artist's work who use each method of mark making.

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!!!!

Turning our buildings into a city and green screen stop motion movies!!

After we completed all of our lovely 3D buildings, we combined them into a giant city from each classroom. We painted poster board to become the sky behind our city. Then the kids had to collaborate on where their building would fit into their classroom's city. 

After the buildings were installed, the students added "props" that they made with paper and glued onto the city. I used writing as an analogy. The buildings were the characters, the sky was their setting......now what "props" could they add to make their story come alive?

So many adorable faces in the 3D glasses they decorated!!

A completed city.

After the entire city was installed, story lines developed and props made to bring the city's narrative to life......we worked in small groups and made movies with the Stikbot stop motion app using a green screen. SO, super FUN!!!! The city was going to be their background so their stories had to take place in their 3D city.

Each small group developed a mini-problem/solution story map and then brainstormed how they would act it out. We took pictures of our cities and loaded them into the app. Now it looked like we were actually inside our 3D cities.

Reviewing their movie.....look at that cute grin ;).

Movies complete! A classroom photo for the end of our 3D investigation.

Making a 3D city

I've attached a LOT of pictures to this post. Instead of writing a few long paragraphs about what we did during this project, I'm going to add captions to explain our process.

One of my all-time favorite books!! We talked about what an architect is and I explained that we would be pretending we are architects during the next weeks. We had a discussion about the types of buildings we see in our communities. They chose a building type they would want to design and then completed research to find out more about their building category.

Kindergarten research papers complete, along with preliminary sketches.

Next, we attempted to build our building out of blocks.

So cool!

I photographed each of their buildings to use for reference later.

Now we used the photographs for observational drawing. I wanted them to eliminate the background so they could focus on the building only. This was a great opportunity to talk about background, foreground and subject. They took black Sharpies and "blacked out" the entire background.

They carefully studied their building photographs and replicated what they saw in their photo.

Good stuff!!

Now we start to use what we previously learned to make our drawings 3d! They painstakingly traced their drawing first in red, then we moved the paper slightly, then they traced it again in blue. We are on our way to special effects!!

I love!!!!

 

Tracing is complete- let's add color! At this point they wore their glasses off and on, checking to make sure their drawing was giving them the 3d effect they desired. I loved the process of continuously checking.

I know you can't see it online but, with 3d glasses on, this looks like it is really popping out at you!