Twitter
Facebook
Flickr
RSSMonday, July 5, 2010
Dem Bones - Day 3 and 4
Day 3 was the field trip! We got on the bus at Brumfield and then went to pick up the group at Ritchie - we had to sit several students 3 to a seat because the camps were a bit larger than expected! Student had their sketchbooks and had a few places where we would spread out and draw. This was a popular spot:
A parent that went with us took pictures and burned them on a CD for everyone to take - too cool! THANKS!!
The art teachers in our too cool bones t-shirts. Good idea Jess!
Mrs. Stone (Coleman), Mrs. Hill (Ritchie), Me (Greenville), Ms. Beach (Brumfield)
Team Ritchie on the left and Team Brumfield on the right!
The whole crew in front of the American Indian Museum
Day 4 was our final day in camp so it was finish it all up day! We printed their skeleton collographs, connected their wire tot heir boxes, finished painting their caleveras and added some glitter touches to them.
We met with each student and discussed their work and which piece we were going to keep for the County Art Festival in the spring. They also filled out a questionnaire - just to get some feedback on what they liked, what they didn't and to make sure they had a good time. I will have to quote some of them - we enjoyed reading over them after everyone had been picked up!
Here are some highlights of the student work:
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Dem Bones ~ Day 2
Since the first day we spent most of the time in the classroom we decided to change it up a bit for day 2. We started by choosing a bone from the still life and taking it outside. Put your bone in the landscape and draw what is around it. So we found some shade and got to work. I could not believe it - 20 kids in a fairly small area - and they were SILENT for over 30 minutes drawing. Here are some shots of the students and their work:
Love to see them using techniques we teach!
completed drawings - wish we had time to push these even further getting them to add darker blacks and more greys!! 
last one is mine
I cropped a little bit - most needed work on their composition. Just a reminder though - these students are only 10/11 years old! Next we talked about aboriginal dot and xray painting and students decorated a box - their wire animal sculpture will adorn the top.
Students listed 10 facts about themselves and added a symbol to go with it - and they will use those symbols to incorporate into their skull! I cannot wait to see these completed tomorrow!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Dem Bones ~ Art Summer Camp
Finished Day 2 of Art summer camp today! I feel like it is Friday already. We have twenty students with two elementary art teachers. I am enjoying working with a new colleague.
Day One was a still life of some amazing animal bones.
Then we had the students create the tones using white and black charcoal sticks. We put some dramatic lighting on the bones to help them see the whites and blacks better. I really enjoyed working on mine too - but of course the life of an art teacher - you get 5 samples started and never finish one of them! I need to sit diwn and create like this more often (and finish)!
this is mine:
Student Work Below is Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Students also worked in a sketchbook to develop ideas for a wire sculpture. They created their favorite animal - then sketched a 'best guess' of the skeleton of the animal.
Loved this one: I am pretty sure this is how it might look, maybe!
We decided after day one that the students were a little bored, as we were with the bones already. The curriculum is developed by the art teachers that will teach the camps. I wish I wasn't so burnt out from the end of the year to put some better input into it. We were struggling a bit with what we had to work with at the end of the first day. So we came in on day two with some additional ideas we thought would keep the kids energized and producing throughout the day. Pics of those works to come...
Tomorrow we will be taking them with a camp happening at another school across the county to DC. 40 students, 4 art teachers and 2 parents...
We are going to see bones of course - at the American Museum of Natural History and the Brian Jungen show at National Museum of the American Indian.
Should be fun!!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Getting Published!
One of my goals was to get published in an art ed mag. No real time frame on it, just one of the things on "my list". While surfing around my sites yesterday this pops up from School Arts: Looking for Authors: ClipCards Needed for SchoolArts Magazine. How cool - I already have 2 done thinking about which others I want to submit.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Lamination Station!
Well school is out and it is time to be productive! I plan on actually doing something this summer ~ not just taxi-ing my son around to his various baseball camps. As summer came to a close last year I felt very disappointed in my accomplishments, or lack there of. There are so many things I say - well if I had time I would do this or that, when in actuality I had time but I wasted it watching Dr. Phil or Oprah.
So for my first productive task - getting up and ready for teaching next year. This year I felt very unprepared and always rushing to get things done. I brought all my files from school home to organize. I have a binder where I keep the lessons that I have taught. Then I have piles of lesson ideas - things I want to teach or modify to teach, I have the usual school/HR/management type paperwork. And I have student handouts and resource materials. So I am setting up files to organize all this and get all the piles that collect throughout the year off my desk!
I started sorting all the lesson ideas into categories. Here it is in the early stages. I used port-its to start off so I could create folders that alternated tabs.
Then I have 2 other boxes that have student handouts and Admin/School/HR stuff in the other:
I have a large file cabinet at school which is very underutilized, basically because I keep everything in piles instead of files!
I decided I wanted to get all my class sets of handouts ready to laminate. At my school the laminator is like made out of gold and only one person holds the key to it. You have to submit your items and the gold key holder only laminates once a week. Well that doesn't really cut it with me being the control freak that I am. So I usually just let things go without laminating - or I don't have them ready in time to wait a week for them. We do however have a Teacher Resource Center in my county. It is a central office that has all kinds of equipment and materials to use or check out. It has a binding machine, LOTS of die cuts, paper cutters, and yes TWO laminators!! Where I can actually feed my own items in all by mybigself! It is just hard to get to it during the year, luckily it is open in the summer. You just call up and say turn on the laminator and by the time you get there it is heated up and ready to go!
I color coded all my class sets by table; laminated them, hole punched and connected them with a metal ring. I have several lessons where students use resource materials to help them along. For the 5th grade illuminated letters lesson I printed out info and several decorative fonts. For 4th grade Aztec Calendar symbol drawing and clay tile I give students a few copies of the Calendar and some Aztec design pages from a Dover clip art book. For the 1st grade aboriginal dot paintings I give students some animal pictures to draw from. 2nd grade Native American pinch pots student look at Dover clip art of Navajo, Hopi, and Pueblo designs. 3rd grade Instrument Collage students get illustrations of instruments to help them.
This should help a lot in that students can help keep things organized. I found that all the handouts were getting thrown into one pile and it would take me forever to hand them out to the tables for the next class. I can easily keep them in a file and pull them out when I need them - some get used for more than one lesson.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
