Presidents' Day Art & Math with Quarters

Here's a fun way to learn about quarters for both math and art. 

I actually started thinking about this awhile ago when I drove by this wall art in the neighborhood.

The lesson starts out with the kids creating the background so that it can dry by the time they are ready to glue on their coin rubbings. This background is wet on wet watercolor.

Then students get to the real work. Using my favorite PRANG colored pencils, they rub the heads side and the tail side of various quarters, noticing all the details. Working in small groups, and using small magnifying glasses, each group records everything they see on their coins on a record sheet.

Later we record their observations in chart form and discuss them. We actually do this for all coins at another time and have the charts to compare what kids find on them all.

Quarters are such great coins to study since they have started being minted for each state. Depending on the age and skills of your students you can decide how much research to have them do as they discover phrases on some of the state quarters. For example, the Hawaii 2008 coin has Hawaiian words that kids can look up on the computer to find the translation. For those of you who are curious, the Hawaiian translation is "The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness." Nice, huh??!!

You can also decide whether to have kids label their rubbings and how detailed to be. Another option is to have students color in each state on a U.S. map to match the color of their rubbing:

I am getting ready to this with 2nd graders and will share some of their art results as they are available. I should mention that I also plan to extend this lesson in math to augment place value/tens and ones work that these students are doing.

Happy Presidents' Day -- hope you enjoy celebrating on your 3 day weekend, too!!!

A Pathway of Dots

After reading Peter Reynold's book, The Dot, last week 3rd graders designed dots in a segment that was to become a larger, collaborative "pathway of dots."

 They used a color system of cool colors to create the path and warm colors with a cool center to design their dots. The actual lesson can be found here. The only addition I made to that lesson was to have students use their 4 fingers (not including their thumb) to measure the width of their pathway. That gives the path continuity when putting the segments together.

Kids LOVE seeing how the segments can be attached in different ways! This is fun for them to do on the rug in groups before it actually goes up on the wall!!

Another International Dot Day Audition

Am I obsessed with Dot Day or what??!! There are just so many places you can go with dots that I find it hard to decide which ideas to use in the classroom. Here is another project that I am thinking about for this year. It is a collaborative effort I am calling Dot Pathways.

This lesson requires simple materials which you can see in the photo below. I like Crayola watercolor markers.

The pathway starts with two watercolor marker lines creating a "channel" within which students will draw and design their dots, using either warm or cool crayons. 

Notice that the marker lines are either warm or cool and all but the very center of dots are the opposite (warm/cool).

Once the dots are designed, kids use a paintbrush and clear water to draw the watercolor marker into the pathway and the background. This is a good opportunity to talk about using just the tip of the brush and which direction to draw out the water. I like to have them paint the pathway quickly with plain water before drawing the watercolor color into the water.

When all is dry, students can join their pathways to create a whole collaborative network of paths.

Oil Pastel Dots for Dot Day - Art Audition #2

With September just around the corner, it's time to start thinking about International Dot Day to celebrate Peter Reynold's book, The Dot. Each year I get engrossed in thinking about all the wonderful possibilities of tying art lessons to this fabulous little gem of a book, and this year is no exception. You can see previous years' lessons here, and here.

The first idea I am auditioning for this year is this simple (and quick) lesson that will introduce oil pastels and pinch-tearing all at the same time.

The supplies are simple: 9 X 12 construction paper pre-cut into fourths, some oil pastels, and a piece of background paper on which to glue the shapes. Pentel is one of my preferred brands because the pastels are soft and easy for students to use with good results.

The first step is to "pinch tear some dots". I would have kids practice this first using scratch paper. You can see a lesson on this by clicking here.

 

Once students have a few "dots" torn they start coloring areas using either warm or cool colors, using a color wheel as a guide to their thinking and planning.  I like to have them overlap areas of color just a little to see how the colors interact and what new colors appear. Using white to tint some of their colors makes for some nice experimenting, too. You could have students use any color system, not just warm and cool.

I had intended to use just black construction paper, but decided I liked the variety of using lighter colors of paper, too. I also thought about and tested using baby oil and swabs to blend the pastels slightly, but found that that didn't really add value (except, perhaps the lovely clean aroma of the baby oil in a classroom!) to this project. That is one of the advantages of auditioning a lesson first, before using it in the classroom!

The final step is to glue the dots on a background paper (either plain or painted if I want to get a little messier), overlapping edges just slightly.

I am actually thinking about doing this as a collaborative project that will cover a HUGE area, with hundreds of dots!!!

Floating Spheres at MacArthur Park

For the past week the idea of painted spheres has been floating around in my mind -- just like the painted spheres floating at MacArthur Park (link to post) that I posted about a week ago. In thinking about doing a sphere project with kids, I decided to try out some different media.

I almost never have kids do a project that I haven't experimented with first -- unless it is purely a "discovery" experience. Good thing I tried this one out because my first idea was a flop -- which I am happy to share to spare anyone else from having to try it!!

I thought about tracing circles on the back of wrapping paper, then flipping the paper over and making black lines to define shapes (like the spheres in the lake) and shading the sphere to make it look 3 dimensional. To add to the dimensional illusion, kids would glue the spheres overlapping on (and in slits in) painted acetate.

Well . . .  the tracing part went just fine.

 Then things started to go south! Once I turned it over and tried to color with black on the wrapping paper, the slick surface of the paper got in the way and was tough to get really black; shading for depth was a nightmare (see red sphere below). So I decided to try it on the back side of the wrapping paper (below, left). Again, the slick surface made the color look washed out -- and there is almost nothing I dislike more than faded looking color!!! I tried it with oil pastels -- same thing (and I didn't want this to be a painting project, so I didn't get the paints out!).

OK. Then it was on to the acetate -- except I was doing this over Labor Day weekend and couldn't find any acetate at home, so I tried it with plastic wrap, UHG!! I managed to get through the process, but it would be way too hard for little ones as it kept moving all over the place.

I used acrylic for this. Sorry for the blurry focus!

 Once it was dry, I made some slits in it so the spheres could slip in and look like they were submerged a bit. That part was actually OK.

So then I decided to try making the spheres on regular drawing paper and coloring with oil pastels. This worked much better. This would be a good way to have students practice using different color families (primary, secondary, warm/cool).

Warm colors -- solid

Primary colors (plus a surprise pop of secondary)

 I like to show students how Van Gogh used a "surprise pop of a different color (think about his "Irises" with the one white iris in the field of violets) and invite them to "surprise their viewer" by inserting an unexpected color.

This shows primary with a "pop" of secondary.

Finally, I imagined what these spheres would look like if I used painted papers that I always have accumulated in  

Spring. So, of course, I painted some papers to try that out using warm colors.

A few trees in the background . . . hmmmmm . . . maybe.

 Black outlining for the spheres . . . seemed like a good idea at first, but looking at it now, maybe not.

So what did I learn this Labor Day?? 

• I learned that painting spheres is still fun (I always do     some sort of sphere work each year -- see here and here.) 
• I reaffirmed that auditioning art lessons at home is always a good idea before taking them to the classroom. It's good to know what some of the pitfalls might be!!
• Think I'll try painting left-over laminating film for my water feature before springing for buying acetate. That might work better!
• I'm also thinking that this would be a smashing collaborative project, where kids could design spheres and make a GIANT lake collage with them!!

Isn't it fun that we can keep on learning forever??!!!!

Painted Spheres - Community Art

Imagine this:  you are driving down Wilshire Blvd.,a major east-west artery in Los Angeles, wending your way through a dense mixture of commercial service stores and higher rise office buildings. As you round a slight bend in the road and glance to the right, the space opens up and you are greeted by an explosion of floating color. 

Well, that is exactly what happened to me last week. The surrounding area looks kind of like this:

The lake at Macarthur Park is filled with hundreds (one paper reported there were up to 3,000) large inflated floating spheres that have been painted with riotous color. 

The spheres range from 3’ to 6’ in diameter. This temporary public art was installed by a group called Portraits of Hope and will be available for viewing for another couple of weeks. 

This link will give you an idea of the size of the spheres and the painting process:  http://tbrnews.com/lifestyle/portraits-of-hope-public-art-project-in-el-segundo/article_27139988-fa7c-11e4-9d78-3b6dcd01779a.html

Portraits of Hope has been in existence since 1995 and has organized many of these exhibits, including painted panels on the outside of a local oil derrick at Beverly Hills High School, painted life-guard stations at the beach and even painted blimps!! The organization serves youth facing socio-economic, physical and mental challenges and has developed special brushes so that adults and children with physical limitations can participate in the team painting projects.

When a friend and I went to check out a new shopping center near us in El Segundo a week or so ago I spotted these panels that reminded me of the spheres. 

Sure enough, a quick Google search revealed that they were painted by Portraits of Hope, too!!!

Now, every time I see one of these installations, I smile!

If you live in the area, and haven't seen the spheres yet, I recommend taking a little drive so that you can experience the happy feeling, too!!  It might be a perfect Labor Day drive:)) And then, of course, try drawing/painting  some of these spheres when you get home!!

Art Rocks!!

How about this for a cool way for kids to practice shading to create the illusion of depth?! You could start by having your class collect their own rocks/pebbles to draw, or you could use a photo of rocks, like this photo of river rocks taken on my vacation in Montana this summer. I ask kids to imagine what it would look like if each of these rocks had a magical patterned stripe (or stripes) around them!

This can be done with any number of rocks appropriate for your age group or time restrictions. It starts with a pencil sketch using a light source to identify shadows. I know I have written about my light source icons, but it bears repeating. Here is a link to that lesson idea: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2010/10/sunny-day-great-shadows.html  I find that often students need practice in how to press harder to get darkest values and lighter for highlights.

 I like to circulate as students work, asking them to identify their darkest and their lightest areas. Sometimes what they see as dark is nowhere near dark enough to make their drawing "pop". We talk a LOT about this. A value chart can be useful for some.

Once the pencil drawing is complete, students create bands of color patterns using permanent (or watercolor) markers. I like Sharpie fine points for this. I think that this is a good way to review (or teach) color elements at the beginning of the school year ( primary, secondary, complementary, etc.) This would also be the time to point out that the color bands will be curved, following the contour of the rock in order to appear more realistic.

The rocks can be cut out and then stacked, overlapping on a background paper like in the photo below. You could easily turn this into a collaborative project by having students make individual rocks, cut them out and glue them as a class cairn (or rock pile).

For those with more advanced drawing skills, the rocks can be drawn  stacked with overlapping parts and then colored like this:

I like using the book, Three Pebbles and a Song by Eileen Spinelli, as a literature connection for this rock project. 

As I look at some of these rock compositions, I see that you could do essentially the same lesson in the spring with eggs as the subject.

Rock on, artists!!