Sat. School Slideshow

Saturday School- The Power of Art - slideshows

Final Class Wrap-up

Although we didn't create an abundance of projects during our 8 weeks of class, we did construct some in-depth ones. Even though we gave our students 2 or 3 class periods to finish them, they were so involved that many had trouble completing them during that time. This was a good thing, though, because we know that they were interested, we kept their attention, they were challenged, and involved and throughtful about their artwork. Therefore, we thought it was only fair to give them the chance to finish any projects that they didn't have time to during the other class periods. We think it's important for the students to finish their work so they learn about perseverance and satisfaction of completing a task. Though they may have gotten frustrated at points, they had the chance to work through their difficulties to get a gratifying outcome. We started the lesson with a review of what we had been working on. I asked the students what the requirements of the project were instead of telling them so that they were involved and I held their attention. They reminded everyone that we were to collage images, changing their meaning or feeling by altering the colors with paint. After that we had and in-progress critique so that students could see examples of artworks that successfully accomplished the requirements of the projects. Melissa led this part and asked students to point out the artwork of their peers which they thought were flourishing and why. I then gave a demonstration on how to make their images blend with their backgrounds better. They seem to grasp this concept better after I did this and their paintings were improved drastically. Some spent the entire class painting, while other moved on to other projects. Melissa had students finish printing their block prints if they hadn't gotten to that point in class. If they were done with this, she asked that they write their artist statements for them. They also created name stencils for the brick wall Melissa will be creating this week. These were both preparations for the exhibit, which I thought was a good way for them to be involved with it. If they finished all of these things, the last thing they could do was to do a little scratch art project. i had bought these craft kits at Michael's a few weeks ago in case we ever had extra time at the end of a class. This was an easy, fun way to end the class and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. I asked some of the kids what their favorite project was and got some good feedback. Some said they liked everything and enjoyed our teaching. One girl said she like that they had a lot of freedom for their own ideas. Only one person said their favorite activity was the scratch art. Therefore, I think the class was a success and we learned as much or more as our students did in our 8 weeks together.

String me a Picture

Saturday was the last Saturday School of the semester, so for the last day of class, we wanted to do a very fun lesson so we had our students make art work out of string and yarn. At first it was a bit challenging trying to come up with ideas and lessons for the students. But after several brainstorms, we came up with 5 activities including the big activity of the day. So we focused on lines, forms and shapes and how string can make all of these things. To help students to further understand the connection between string and line, we showed students a short clip from Harold and the Purple Crayon. It’s an awesome clip and I’m starting to fall in love with the book and the cartoon!

Afterwards, we let students play in the centers:

Silly String Art

Nail Board String Art

Shadow Play

Projection Center

As you can see, the students had a blast playing with different lines and shapes in each of the centers. There’s a lot of colors and I bet there’s some interesting stories behind each of the art works.

Following center time was snack and then the Big Activity of the day. Continuing with the concept of line, form, and shapes, students made a collaborative string. The students layered various types of yarn of different color on top of a large black canvas that had strips of velcro on it. By using velcro, the students were able to stick the yarn in place of the canvas without it falling off.

So in this image above, my mentor and 2 other students are creating an incredible art work that tells an amazing story. So in this piece, the students are creating a maze or an obstacle course that has so many hidden passageways and such. The middle section that has very few yarn is a “force field” which protects people that are in the obstacle from all the bad guys. I’m just incredibly amazed how young minds have such great ways of thinking and telling their stories.

This is an image of a shark (the purple yarn that’s an upside down “Y”) that eats the bad guys. This shark is part of the obstacle art piece. Also, this particular student has amazing art works. He draws in the style of comic books with sections and chapters (and mind you that this student is 5 years old!) A majority of his drawings are of aliens and other creatures that fight good and bad guys (and the good guys always win).

On top of all the fun lessons and activities, we had a couple of guest speakers stop by to talk to the students. The guest speakers previously filmed one of our class for an assignment. They came back to show some of the clips that they took of the students. The film crew acted as paparrazi's for a day and they showed clips of some of the students performance and behavior in class. The guests asked students questions pertaining to the video clips. This took about 20 minutes to do, and since a good amount of time was taken from our day, we had to take out our powerpoint and shorten a bit of things to fit our guest speakers in for the day. Surprisingly, everything worked out and the students had a really good time.

So this was the last lesson of the 8 lessons for the unit. I learned so much about teaching thus far and I know that there are going to be more things that I will learn. This was a great opportunity for me to see where I am as a teacher and how I can encourage people to think outside of the box and also for my students to encourage me to do the same.

I'm introducing the Big Activity of the day: yarn art on velcro. The students were so eager to participate in the activity (as you can see by Autumn's unpleasant look after Trinity crushed her just so she could see the table)

Lacey helping Anja and Autumn with the string design over by the Nail Board String Art center.

Anja was telling Lacey about all the things that she got for her birthday, like 2 gold fishes from a carnival.

Poppy, Allison, Tyler, and Jin Gyo having fun in their soundsuits over by the shadow play center. Poppy was taking a picture of me while I was taking a picture of her. Jin Gyo was fixing Tyler's hair in the back.

One of our students borrowed my camera and decided to take lots of pictures of Trinity.

Lacey and Autumn making a silly face for the camera

Shannon just loves to dress up and pretend to be a kitty. Instead of placing the yarn on the black canvas and velcro, she wrapped the yarn on her hands and feet. And then crawled on the floor as if she was a cat.

Anja posing over by the Shadow play center

Week 8 LArge Canvases 2

This week the students finished their ongoing large canvas project. Between the photograph hunt, the tracing, and painting, this project ended up taking four weeks. It was a lot longer then we initially expected but it worked out well since we did four weeks of miniatures, and then had a break and four weeks of large projects. We started by giving a demonstration to show review laying, color mixture and texture. Then we took each canvas out one by one and looked at it with the class. We went over what looked really good in each painting and why, then what each group could work on today. We also asked the students to talk about the paintings. They were extremely enthusiastic and eager to talk about the pieces. The only think we really needed to help them with was keeping the conversation mostly positive. Since it was our first form of a “critique” we wanted to make sure the students were left feeling proud and confident about their work.


The students worked well again this week. We praised them for their good behavior last week and told them that this week they would be able to choose whatever colors they wished. The students really did not need much help with their paintings. They appeared to work together and we could see many of the students taking responsibilities and teaching each other. The paintings can out amazing and our only problem is who is going to get to keep them. We were expecting that the size would deter parents from wanting to take them home, but instead we have had multiple parents asking for them. If any one knows of a place, like a library or center, that may want them to permanently display them let us know!

Week 7, 4/9 - Maps and Mazes

This week Kris Sunday and Chris Shulte took over. They divided the classroom into 4 stations which was something the class had never done before. The main station was mazes. The front of the classroom was divided into four parts with 3 sections. The first section contained objects like rocks, pompoms, popsicle sticks, animal figures, buttons, rubber bands, etc.. The students were able to create their own maze until they reached a canvas at which point they were to continue their maze with paint markers. And from the paint markers they could continue their maze again with various shapes cut out of colorful patterned paper.

The second station was an overhead projector that had clear rocks and transparencies of mazes that were projected onto white paper the students could draw on.

The third included mazes the students could complete and add onto.

And the fourth station included plain white pieces of paper 14/18in? (a small drawing pad size) on top of brown covered tables. The idea was for the students to make their own maze and connect or not connect to the others at the table.

There was a lot to do and the students seemed really excited to explore all of the areas. Because Jess and I were in charge of documentation we were able to really listen to the students and see what they were doing. I noticed that many gravitated towards the main activity and the overhead. There were quite a few at the dialogue table but without instruction (and even with) they didn't seem to grasp the idea of linking their mazes and seemed almost to imitate what was being taught. I did see a few students who were into the project but when I came over to encourage some drawing and interaction, they didn't have a lot to say. The overhead was a lot of fun for the students because I don't think they have ever worked with one so closely. The one place there was a lot of maze making was the main center. There were usually 3-6 students working in one area and they were all making very different maps. Christina, Jessie and Layla were making princess lanes and princess homes and nice looking pathways while Garrison Mahmoud and Evan had intricate rules, traps and underground paths. They were all very much involved in what they were making and the story they were telling as they were creating.

Overall I think the set up went really well because it gave them a lot of freedom. But it was also a very different style of teaching and something the students weren't used to because we have never done that in past lessons. Also, in the past we usually had one project with one goal in mind, and with this lesson I'm not sure their was a concrete goal. There was no emphasis on finished art work but instead on the exploring aspect.

Something interesting happened though. The students were taking objects like plastic pipes, popsicle sticks and pompoms and joining them together with tape to make 3D miniature sections of a maze or completely abstract looking forms, or tapper sticks. A few others were making elevators that led to or allowed someone or something to go hiking or wherever they imagined. It was fun to see how excited they were about making something they could hold, or something that served a function. They also has rich stories to go a long with their simple constructions.

I think this was a really important realization. It seems that the students want something they can take home, no matter how small or big. And because they had all of these various objects, it was more exciting than the mostly 2D things we've been doing.

I think that the centers are a good idea, but if I were to do it again I would make maybe two-three stations with a specific goal to reach before switching. It is also difficult to watch every students since there are so many in the class.

And lastly, I learned a lot about myself during this process. I realized that I need to have a richer dialogue with students rather than just a casual conversation. I think that type of communication is important so that you can understand what students like to do and therefore designs art projects and lessons that will keep them engaged, but I feel there needs to be more to encourage art making. I also wonder if students this age would be able to grasp more conceptual concepts and I feel almost unfulfilled to just watch students make just to make, and not be able to track progression or have more serious conversations (with some but not all). But at the same time I really enjoy the excitement they have at this age, and the stories they are capable of telling. So I think they are capable of more, I just have to improve how I teach and really question what lessons, questions and materials will benefit and challenge them most.

The Power of Color, Part Deux

This week we continued with the Power of Color lesson. Last week, students were able to explore the acrylic paint medium and practice mixing it with glaze to create transparencies. This week the students started painting the boards that they gesso-ed last week. They were instructed to include 3-5 printed images in their piece by painting under and over it with glaze and paint to get it to stick. The objective of the project is to have them change the meaning or the connotation of the combination of images by changing their colors. We encouraged the students to choose images that "went together" or would have meaning when juxtaposed. We also encouraged the students to really incorporate the images into the painting so that maybe you couldn't tell what was painted and what was printed; however, not many students actually did this. Many were hesitant to do more than the background and the application of the images. Perhaps we could have pulled more out of the students if we had more time in class for them to work-- they would have needed more time to plan out their painting before starting to paint.
One thing that challenged us this week was that one student refused to include any images in his painting. He painted an interesting background in which he explored many different textures and colors--which he later articulated to me-- however, he did not actually do the project we set forth for him. So, in a school art class setting, how would we determine his grade? On one hand, we encourage creativity and innovation and this is what he did: he explored the medium we gave him in his own way and I think he learned a lot about it in the process. On the other hand, if you give this student an "A" --even though he didn't actually do the project-- you can't rightfully give another student who followed the directions a bad grade... can you?
I'm glad we're facing dilemmas like this now because I think it'll help us figure out our teaching philosophy and we'll be more prepared to deal with something like this in a real classroom setting. But as of right now, I don't know how I'd handle that in my school classroom yet.

[Pictures to come.]

Week 7: Sound Suits

This week, students learned how to create costumes that produced sound. On top of that, students made instruments out of pie pans and recycled bottles, necklaces out of beads and recycled bottle caps and can tops. Students also got a chance to draw on a large music sheet and play with their shadows in the shadow center. This weeks lesson went very well, except for when the computer shut off. However, Lacey was able to keep the students attention for a good solid 10 minutes while I reload the PowerPoint and the YouTube videos. She showed a demonstration of how costumes can make sound by placing random objects on her such as a hat and some aluminum foil object that looked like a slinky (I'm not quite sure what it's called).

But other than that unexpected event, the lesson went well. The students enjoyed making their costumes and wearing it, especially the girls. They danced with their costumes and played with their handmade instruments. So the classroom was very noisy with lots of music and dancing.

Costume and Music Galore!

(The students giving miss Lacey hugs)

(Grace showing off her fancy drums. She also didn't want me to take a picture of her.)

(Ava mesmerized by her drum. During the big activity, she got really upset because every time that she tied the bells to her costume, it fell off. So she flipped out and Moni and I had to calm her down. After awhile she calmed down and she started dancing with her costume on)

(All the students dancing and playing with their tambourines during the dance party. Notice that only the girls are wearing their costumes. I've noticed that the boys played with their tambourines and maracas. We also had 2 students from A ED 211 to help us out with the lesson.)

(Letizia and Alison making their recyclable necklaces)