Sock Monkey Mania

I can hardly contain how excited I am over this project - SOCK MONKEY MAINA!  My middle school elective class learned how to stitch by making these adorable sock monkeys.  I had students observe the lovable stuffed animal and explore how it is made from one pair of socks.  From there, we discussed how to use a patterns and how most successful sewers start with a pattern to guide them through a project.  

I then passed out a ziplock bag for each student to keep their materials from getting jumbled.  They each got a pair of socks, a pair of scissors, one Sharpie, a sock monkey pattern and a needle.  We walked through the directions for sock number one and discussed how to thread a needle, make a knot, and start a basic stitching pattern.  I found this web site helpful How to Make a Sock Monkey to show the basic steps otherwise it would have been quite laborious to create an example for each stage along the way.

The next few classes involved minor finger bleeds, much laughter and students seeing their own success.  I can't express how happy this class was with their final product and I hope they will cherish these stuffed animals for the years ahead!

Onomatopoeias

A beautiful collaboration was made with my 5th grade students' classroom learning and art experience.  I had an opportunity to collaborate with their homeroom teacher and what an impact it makes on student learning, wow!!!  In ELA class, students were embellishing their writing by adding onomatopoeias to their elephant reports.  I quickly acted on this from a pop art perspective and had students look at art work by Roy Lichtenstein and some animated original Batman clips to see how onomatopoeia is used in art.

We then quickly got to work by selecting an onomatopoeia and turned it into bubble letters.  The students enjoyed writing in bubble letters except that each letter needed to touch each other so when it came time to cutting out their onomatopoeia to add to a background, there wouldn't be gaps to cut through.  Students made their background bubbles using newsprint and then created a design that embellished the word that they chose.  The final stage was to glue the word to the bubble and then the bubble to a background which students got to design on their own with oil pastels, watercolor and glitter.

Adding pixelation and details to the onomatopoeia

A student working on the newsprint collage bubble to go underneath their onomatopoeia

Display of exerts from student elephant research project with onomatopoeias 

Adjacent display of artistic variation of onomatopoeias

Save the Date: Winter Arts Showcase 12/17/15

WINTER ARTS SHOWCASE

ORCHARD GARDENS PILOT SCHOOL 

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17th 

5:00-7:00pm

Come walk the corridors,

view the amazing student art work, 

and stay to enjoy performances from 

music, dance and theater!

1st grade VanGogh Inspired Still Lives

7th grade Romero Britto Painting

1st grade Paul Klee Cats

Middle school elective Jasper Johns inspired American Flags

5th grade Clipper Ships

6th Grade Cowboy & Cowgirl Portraits

2nd grade Geometric Cityscapes

Navajo Design

Keeping with the western theme, 6th graders worked on pattern and design by making Navajo Tapestries.  Students watched a short clip about Navajo rug makers and learned how colors were limited due to the color of the fleece of the sheep.  I had students design their own rugs using similar shapes and patterns that they saw in Navajo examples and then select a limited palate of three colors to work with.  Afterwards, we sketched cow skulls to add onto their tapestries.

1st Graders Take On VanGogh

Still Life with Roses and Anemones
1890
Vincent van Gogh

It all started with wanting to use leftover paint from previous classes.  There wasn't enough to make a full painting but certainly we could make petals and flowers.  Ah-ha!  1st graders would begin a study on Vincent van Gogh and Still Life painting.  We began by designing the flowers and using a variety of brush strokes to make the petals.  After folding our papers into four sections, we experimented with circles, straight lines, and even inventive combinations to make the flowers.   

Day two consisted of making the vase, table and background.  I had the students section off their painting by using a 9"x12" to block off the top of their paper thus leaving room for the flowers and allowing the vase to be on the bottom half of the paper.

Beautiful!!!

Bicycles and tricycles

I accidentally stumbled upon this short film when my children were watching a Scholastic DVD.  It immediately brought me back to my childhood as I vividly remember watching this as a child.  The magic of the tricycle still holds strong as I showed this clip to my middle school students.  They cheered for the fearless rider as the tricycle tries to reunite with its owner.  

We then used the video/story, The Remarkable Riderless Runaway Tricycle, to launch our study of drawing parts of a bicycle and using view finders to isolate an image and focus on details.  Students were given images of bicycles and a view finder.  They were asked to take the view finder and place it on a section and draw what they saw in the focus window.  We sketched four different variations before selecting a favorite snap-shot to then enlarge and add color to. 

Todd Parr Faces

My Strand students listened to the story, It's Okay to Be Different by Todd Parr.  We looked at all the different faces and talked about color, shape and feelings.  Students then painted four 6"x6" squares for the background of the four faces they were going to make.  We used bright fluorescent colors to really capture the illustrations in the book. 

Students then worked on each face by tracing a circle and then adding the essential features for their Todd Parr style faces: eyes, mouth, ears, and funky hair.