Festival of Elephants

Coming soon!

Art and Service Learning, Module 4-2 Digital Literacy

"Be not simply good-be good for something."
                              -Henry David Thoreau

I recently read an article for class discussing service learning and the art room.  It talked about making every day (not just Earth Day) a learning day in regards to the environment.  They suggested things that are easy, such as paper recycling (and having students go into classrooms and explain the importance of paper recycling). Another easy idea would be collecting aluminum tabs for the Ronald McDonald House, or making and selling bookmarks to help out a local Food Bank in your area. A more elaborate idea might be making, repairing, and cleaning out nesting boxes for birds.  The whole idea of service learning is that it is something local and that students feel the humanity in the project that you choose.

4.1 Changes

I love this idea- kids being kids, and solving problems all at the same time!  The implications for my classroom are huge- here are kids in a classroom creating, and at the same time helping researchers solve problems. At Kidsteam, kids and researchers are design partners.  The program is a collaboration between higher education, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. My goal is to open up my classroom so that it does not
 inhibit innovation and free thinking, and encourage my students to think outside the box.

Emerging Technology

I am fortunate to work in a school district that is very up to date on technology.  We are lucky enough to have Smart boards in just about every room, flip cameras to check out in the library, color printer (for special printing), I Respond units, digital cameras, and a television editing studio.  I feel certain that there are other technology items at my fingertips at school that I have left out.  What I'd love to know is what YOU use and how you use it!  Please help me out this blog post is for a class and I need some ideas of what I can do in my classroom!  Thanks!

In the Style of Andy Warhol- Cats!

These were done by my 4^th and 2nd grade students.  The top three are from 4th grade students and the one just above is from a second grade student.  We discussed Warhol, looked at Warhol's Cats, Cats, Cats, and read Uncle Andy's Cats with the younger students. When I plan units everyone (K-4) all study the same artist, but I try to vary the project.  This usually insures that when the art show rolls around in April that I have a variety of work to display- not just the same projects done with five different grade levels.  I chose to introduce complimentary colors in this unit, so that is why we have the color combinations that you see.  It went along great with the variety of colors Warhol used!  In the fourth grade my principal asked that I incorporate some geometric shapes into a project, so I gave them handouts to trace or cut out and use as stencils of parallelograms, rhombuses, and trapezoids. The cats were done on another piece of paper and once they were drawn, they were outlined with a Sharpie marker. I used a how to draw cats book from the library and made a packet of pages from the drawing book to help everyone out.  I also used the page from Art Projects for Kids blog http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2008/08/how-to-draw-cat.html. We painted the cat (in watercolors) doing one color one art class, and the other color the next art class. For second grade we did a construction paper collage with complimentary colors (either the colors they used on their cat or a new set of compliments).  Again, we drew the cats on another piece of paper and water colored one color one class period and the compliment the next art class.  Both second and fourth grade glued them on black construction paper and trimmed trying to leave about a ¼” of the black showing, then glued it to the background.

In The Smaller Style of Frank Stella

These are the same project, just done on a smaller scale.  I am not sure if these were as successful as the larger size, maybe I didn't stress having a variety of sizes. I do like the variety of sized as far as displaying them. 

In the Style of Frank Stella

 Using tag board, tempera cakes, cardboard, and oil pastels we paid homage to one of my favorite artists, Frank Stella.  We began by talking about organic and geometric shapes and looked at Stella's work.  We discussed the fact that Stella's shapes often had shapes inside of them, and decided that this would be important to include in our work. We also looked at the variety of sizes of the shapes that Stella uses in his work. Students began by coming up with 10 shapes to use in their work and drew these on tag board.  Once the shapes were drawn and cut out, we decided what shapes we wanted to cut other shapes into.  We folded our shapes and made a cut with scissors, then opened up the shape to cut out the second shape. Using tempera cakes we painted our shapes and our background paper over several art classes.  The paint looked better with several layers applied.  Once the desired color was achieved we cut small pieces of cardboard and glued them to the back of the shapes.  The cardboard provided a "lift" to the tag board to give them a three dimensional appearance.  Once the cardboard was dry students glued their shapes in to place on their background paper, remembering to overlap some of the shapes as Stella does in his work.  After the glued shapes were allowed to dry, we used oil pastels to give the appearance of etched lines that appear in Stella's shapes. 

August & September
We will spend the first two months of the year learning about the artist Paul Klee.  We will spend both months looking at his on his painting.  We will paint our own "Fish" and use oil pastels to make our own "Cat and Bird". Our technology tie-in will be writing our own Artist's Statement on the computer for our work.

October & November
We will spend this time learning about the artist Andy Warhol.  He is my favorite artist to talk about with my students!  We will talk about his Campbell's Soup cans, fascination with celebrities, and his series of cats.  We will paint our own "Cats" and use bright colors in the style of Warhol.  We'll learn about printmaking and  to make our own "Warhol Soup Can". Our technology tie-in will be journaling our answers to our reflective writing prompts.
 

December & January
These two cold months will be spent learning about the artist Pablo Picasso and his different styles of artwork.  We will make "Cubist Self-Portraits" using an overhead transparency and oil pastels, and complete a "Blue Period Portrait" of a friend.  We will tie-in technology by using the flip cameras and work in pairs to tape our responses to our reflective questions.  This is usually reflective writing, but this time we will interview our partner while taping them with the flip cameras.