Button, Button, Who's Got Toad's Button?

I introduced my kindergartners to Frog and Toad today. I read them The Lost Button and during the story they had to keep track of all the attributes of the button Toad lost. I was impressed with their ability to keep five characteristics straight and their deductive capabilities. By the time we got to the interactive SMART Board vortex activity, they all just knew exactly which button was the correct one by automatically eliminating all other possibilities. After the story and interactive work, I gave each table a tray of buttons and the kids sorted them first by color and then by shape. They had to collaborate on the sorting and they did that very well. You can see the concentration on their faces and also pride in their success. (See Animoto below)

Pencils Ready? Action!!

Research shows that children use the human body as reference for many other things they draw such as buildings, trees, animals, etc. Research also shows that unless children are given concrete (step by step) instruction in figure drawing that they will begin to eliminate figures from their drawings. This is because they are no longer satisfied with the less than realistic figures they drew as young children. They simply do not know how to render more realistic figures and therefore begin to avoid them.To avoid this, primary children in my art classes are given concrete instruction in gesture drawing that captures action simply in 30 second poses and allows students to not worry about being perfect. They also get instruction in human body proportion so they can understand the relation of one part to another. (See Animoto below)

Kindergarten Sewing Cards

Sewing cards are a nice safe way for kids to understand the downward and upward movements needed later when I bring out real needles and thread. I cut out foam shapes and punched holes to make my own bright colored cards. Note to self: don't. I spent so much time punching holes that with very little effort were torn from the foam sheets. That was frustrating. Chip board was too heavy to punch, so this was my only solution at the time. I spent a lot on those big colored buttons but we used them for sorting too. (See Animoto below)

Familia

Students in kindergarten looked at the Virtual Manikin interactive website so they could see just how long their arms are and how we don't always stand completely still. Developmentally, this was just an introduction to the concept and not expected to find its way into their drawings until later. Students were encouraged to include as many details as possible. (See video below)

Starry Nights

Students in Mr. Ortega's 1st and 2nd grade have been learning a little bit about Vincent Van Gogh and today they finished working on their own Starry Night drawings. (See Animoto below)

Math & Art: It adds up to fun!

Students in Kindergarten used clay to create 2D shapes as part of their math curriculum, and the 1st and 2nd graders used Tux Paint stamps to create 10 sets of 10 in order to celebrate the 100th day of the school year. (See video below)

Kindergarten Lizards

Kindergartners used oil pastels to create lizard designs. Many of the students are in the pre-schematic level and the lizard fits into the tadpole schema fairly well.

Tissue Paper ala Keith Haring

Students in 1st and 2nd grades looked at a few of Keith Haring's stick figures and drew a stick figure in white pencil on black construction paper. They used tissue squares wrapped around the bottom of pencils and glued them to their stick figure drawing. After the initial application of tissue, students chose a second color to outline the figure.

Andy Warhol Revisited - Jr. High Digital Graphics

7th and 8th graders in my Digital Graphics class visited the Andy Warhol Interactive website in order to explore variations in hue and saturation which were our two most recent vocabulary words. After getting a sense of what could be done using Marilyn Monroe as a subject, students learned how to resize and duplicate layers in Gimp and then explore the Hue/Saturation feature to recolorize their school pictures. A few who finished early got to do the same thing for a cartoon character. These students are learning many of the tools and features of Gimp in doing this project. (See Prezi below)

5th & 6th Gr. 1 Pt. Perspective

Teaching one point perspective is always fun and doing names gives the students a way to do what young teens do anyway, focus on themselves. They learn precision, logic, measuring and craftsmanship along the way and end up with a very nice graphic piece. (See video below)