n.c. arts part two...

Well we have moved on to the Mountains of North Carolina. And lucky for us... we are close enough to take a little visit to Asheville.We get to visit the Biltmore Estates and The Folk Art Center. This is super awesome because:
The Biltmore is AMAZING
The kids get to see two types of N.C. living at the turn of the century. (Richie Rich and Mountain Folk)
We go to the oldest and longest running craft store (Allanstand Craft Shop) in the country. The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE this!!
We get to visit the mountains of N.C. in the fall - best leaves EVER!


I always struggle with which mountain craft to choose for this part of the unit. There are a few really cool choices: Face jugs, weaving, doll making, etc. But the kids really enjoy weaving, so this is what I go with.

We go over a few weaving terms that I expect the students to use while working on the project...

• Weaving — The process of forming cloth or fabric on a loom by interlacing yarn or thread.
• Loom — A frame for the weaving.
• Warp — Threads running lengthwise on the loom. The warp is placed on the loom prior to beginning the weaving process.
• Weft — Threads that are weaved across the warp threads to form the web.
• Web — The cloth or fabric produced by weaving.

I have cardboard looms that I reuse every year.  I make the students warp the loom. I have a variety of shapes and sizes of looms. Some are much faster then others.(This is always a struggle for the art teacher.) I try to encourage faster students to take the bigger looms.

 

I give students choice of colors of yarn and limit it to at least 2 colors no more than 4. They also must stick with a pattern of colors and number of wefts.

Students think they are almost due... but I walk around and push up the weaving to make sure they are nice and tight. MWHAHAHA.. I have now been dubbed by the students "The Shrinker"...

 

We have been so lucky to be having the most beautiful and warm fall... the students get to lay outside and weave. Ah thank you to my beautiful school and campus!

When finished students remove from the loom and attach a stick so the weaving can hang. Lastly, the student add beads.

Feast your eyes on these puppies...

holiday art with a twist...

 

We finished our holiday art project in 5th grade. These lovelies are going to be hanging in the local library for all of December! I am pleased with the outcome of this project!

They are just a little bit different then the usual holiday themed business...

miro flowers....

Joan Miro is the perfect artist for a 1st grader. His work is fun, colorful, and exciting. The kids eat it up!

For this project, we first looked at a bunch of Miro's paintings. I have the kids talk about what they see, what they think the artist was trying to show, and we even talked about what surrealism is.

It is really neat to hear what the kids have to say about the paintings. It is the perfect time to bring up how everyone sees something different and that we can like and dislike different aspects of art. 

We talk about lines, geometric, and organic shapes; what they are and how they are different from each other.  The students were required to have both organic and geometric shapes, and all parts of a flower in their artwork. We used color pencils and outlined with markers.

I love what they came up with!!!

 

 

 Last year I did this project, but the students had to create Miro inspired animals...

Artwork at the top of the post:
Joan Miro, Carnival of Harlequin, 1924

neglect...

Yes, I have been blinded by some delectable new (to me) music and have yet to share my fa fa favorite. This rainy Tuesday afternoon is perfect for this little ditty...
Dig this....


Artist: Ryan Adams
Song: Oh My Sweet Carolina (Live and Acoustic)
Album: Heartbreaker

n.c. arts

I just love my 4th grade curriculum!!! In Language Arts and Social Studies, the students spend the first trimester learning about the different regions of North Carolina. So of course in art, we do a project related to each of the three regions... I would like to present to you... the regions of N.C. (art style)

Coastal Region: Lighthouse watercolors

Student had to choose one of the seven N.C. Lighthouse to base both a poem (in L.A.) and a watercolor painting. I like to challenge the students whenever I can... enter devious laugh here... So I made them do a small painting. The students have been watercoloring for years, and they are capable of working within a smaller space. The students each received a piece of watercolor paper... (I cut a 9x12 inch watercolor paper in half.)

We had a class discussion on watercolors: wet next to wet will run and mix colors, how to blend, using the correct size brush, making colors lighter or darker, etc. 

Requirments:
Must tape edges
Must demonstrate blending in the sky
Must accurately depict the lighthouse

Look at these beauts... (students had to mount both the painting and a poem together)

Stay tuned for...

Mountain Region: Weaving

AND

Piedmont Region: Catawba Indian Pottery

a solution...

Well... I figured out what to do with those silly apple prints that were collecting dust at the bottom of the drawer!!!

I read the kids A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry. By the way, this is just such a sweet book, and it has awesome illustrations!  Since the kids are learning about apples, I thought, why not do something that has to do with where the apples come from... TREEEEEEES... (Oh and I love trees and I mean LOVE)

In class we talked about the usual, what trees look like in all four seasons, colors of fall leaves, etc. I demoed how to draw a tree and let the kids go at it on a brown sheet of paper... some kids went buck wild with branches or should I say spikes... but for the most part I was impressed with the trees they made.

We cut the tree out (challenging for some) and then glued the trees on a blue sheet of paper (also challenging for some).

Next, we cut out the apple prints and then made fall colored leaves. I required them at least 5 apples and 10 leaves. It was nice to have the requirement because I could ask them to count how many they have of each and ask how many more they need. A little math integration!

I think this was a great project, the kids enjoyed the drawing, cutting and gluing. It hits all the basics of what kinder kids need to practice. Plus we used those boring apple prints... YAY!

Here are a few more examples... not done yet, but it will give you an idea...

while i wait...

I have 36 pieces of film to scan tonight and since there is some in between time, I thought I would share some NEW PHOTOS!

I have to say... these pinhole photos have turned out to be amazing! I love how the students have quickly adapted to the restrictions of the pinhole camera. (Ridiculously slow shutter speeds, loading and unloading in the dark... which means waiting for me to tape them into a bathroom, and an unreliable piece of electrical tape to protect their photo from too much sunlight.) In fact, they have taken those restrictions and done some really creative things! I am like a proud photo Mama!

Here are a few more gems for your viewing pleasure...

oh no...

There was almost a disaster for the pinhole photo class....

I forgot to lock the bathroom while loading the film (you must do this in the complete darkness...) and someone walked in... OOOH NOOO!!!

I just finished developing the film and there were only minor issues with the film!!! No film was ruined!!

Song to slow my racing heart rate...





Artist: Bon Iver
Song: Skinny Love
Album: For Emma, Forever Ago

a pleasant surprise...

I am NOT one to do holiday themed projects...I'm just not into doing projects related to Christmas, Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc.... But this year I took on the challenge of creating the art for the holiday show and for a local library... Here we are Mid November, 75 degrees and we are talking about snowmen and poinsettias. Oy vey!

For the 5th grade class, I gave them 4 choices for their project:
snowglobes
poinsettias
snowflakes
and
nutcrackers...

I put out bins of scrap construction paper, tissue paper, wall paper scraps, ribbon, and yarn. I told them they had to collage the option they chose. We talked about what a collage means and I gave them some examples of what they can do. Very basic. I wanted to see what they came up with...

Yes, there was an art room explosion of every type of paper... but...

 

These projects are starting off awesome!!

It could have something to do with the fact that the doors of the art room are open letting in the beautiful 75 degree weather... these are the most unique holiday projects I have seen (I may be bias though)

Finish product coming soon....

pinhole photography...

My elective for the upper school students is the amazing, fantastic, memorizing, magical pinhole photography!!! (I seriously LOVE this!!!)

Pinhole Camera... (For those of you who don't know)
The simplest camera you can use to take a photograph. A pinhole camera is a closed light-tight box with a pinhole on one side. Light enters through the hole and projects an inverted and reversed image on photographic film or paper placed inside the box, opposite the hole.

As a class, we turned one of our schools classrooms into a camera obscura... basically a room sized, live action camera but it doesn't actually record a photograph... (look it up if you want more info)

Students built cameras from just a sheet of foam core and glue. (Yes, that means the students had to measure, cut, and glue everything together...) (YIKESSSSS)

We took photographs with these camera: the exposure times ranging from 30 seconds to 20 minutes. 

No darkroom at school = a takeover of the teacher bathroom, hanging black fabric and duct taping light leaks from cracks in the door. We develop the film in my classroom and I scanned the images at home. We are going to print cyanotypes with the negatives, but we have not gotten there yet!

Look at these photos done with homemade cameras... 

 

 Magical right?