Friday, March 31, 2017

Math Language in Grade 1 Collage

First graders are finishing their amazing self-portraits!


Students are learning about how to use math skills in their art-making to increase accuracy. They began with examining the proportions of the face and learning about how to use math vocabulary to talk about where facial features are located, e.g. My eyes are in the middle of my head. Half of my face is below my eyes, and half is above. My head is an oval.


Artists felt their faces and used comparative skills to find out that the bottom of their nose is, on average three quarters of the day down their head, and that the space between their eyes is also about one eye-width wide, making their whole face about five eye-widths wide.

Artists also discussed relative measurement, and used the size and shape of their heads to create a pattern-piece for tracing and cutting out hair which fit the head naturally. Because we were making these portraits with paper collage, students could draw and cut the needed shapes easily, and compare them to the next shape needed.


Students talked about creating expressions with their facial features that tell the viewer how they are feeling.

As a group we also discussed how we are so much more interesting than just what we look like, and so students added lots of details and background items that tell the viewer more about what they love, what interests them, and who they are inside.




Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Insect Prints

Art and science merge naturally in an art room, as you have seen my students do here, here, and in many other lessons as well. In this lesson, fourth and fifth grade students observed, drew, and printed insects.


When a teacher tell a class that they are doing a lesson on insects, the reaction is predictably split between abject horror and total exuberance. Knowing that some students will be thrilled to look at samples of insects (I am now the proud owner of glass-encased creatures in the classroom including a Blue Morpho butterfly, a scorpion, and a tarantula), while others may find looking at specimens is uncomfortable to do, so I make it optional.

The library has plenty of options for students who need a little distance from their insects, and many students chose to work with photographs or field guides to make their prints.


Now, technically, insects have have six legs, so our helpful friends the arachnids are not included. The array that fits under the "insect" category is pretty dizzying and beautiful, and beetles especially captured a lot of student attention. Stag beetles, scarab beetles, and dung beetles are shiny and metallic-looking, like little jewels, and were popular among these young artists.


Learning to really look is a skill scientists use all of the time to make correct observations, whether in a lab or the natural world. Differentiating between similar creatures is exactly what we expect artists in field guides to do, to help us identify what we are looking at. The tiniest details matter, especially when multiple species share significant similarities. Where a leg is jointed, how the wings are shaped, and where limbs attach to the body all provide useful identifying information. Scientific drawing is a skill that can be taught very early, like in this fun game I began a couple years back.


Students made a series of five prints (one on flat colored paper, and four on folded cards), and tried out different printing inks and effects, such as offsetting multiple colors or creating gradients.



The process involved transferring a drawing to styrofoam printing plates, and compressing either the insect itself or the background, then using brayers to ink the plates.


A piece of paper is pressed and rubbed onto the print plate (how I dream of students having a small printing press!), and the print is pulled.  Many of the compositions were dynamic, and some were outright funny, like this one saying, Goodbye!

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Learning Perspective (Not The Art Kind) From My Students.

If you have ever been on Pinterest, it is abuzz with beautiful ideas for young children to explore colors, textures, and play. Knowing several other teachers who regularly and successfully use the ideas they find, I decided to try out a sensory bin idea for Kindergarten carpet choice time in art class.


As the blue rice and sea creatures came together into these beautiful bins of oceanic exploration, with their endless pretend play potential, I have to say that I was feeling pretty pleased. The kids will be thrilled! They will love their new station, and will clamor to use it!  


So, as the ocean-blue rice was drying near the doorway, waiting for my kinders to play with it, my fifth graders arrived for their first-period class.


The very first fifth grade student in the door paused next to the rice, looked at it a moment, and calming stated, shaking his head, "Wow. What a waste of food." He walked to my carpet and sat down, maturely ready to start class with me, a teacher who just. didn't. get. it.


Here's the scoop: He was right. I was all at once grateful for his perspective (and thanked him) and embarrassed at my own pride and ignorance about the project.
That bag of rice could feed a family for most of a week. Food security is an ongoing issue for many students, and yet this sensory bin suggests that food is abundant and not of any great value, which of course any thinking person would know is untrue. Yet, I had failed to think about it.

Many blogs treat rice as though it doesn't matter, shrugging at using the food staple for play, stating things such as "it's very inexpensive," or "I spent less on rice than on a box of markers, and it lasts longer." But those things are beside the point- the point is that in using food for play, I failed to consider other perspectives, which are real for the people who experience them, and need to be respected.

I am still learning. Learning everyday from my amazing, insightful students.