A peak of Art: Sept 23-30, on-going projects

Our projects are in full gear! Here are some highlights:

4th grade: 

Ancient Egyptian Mummy Coffins (2D)

Guiding Idea: 

Ancient Civilizations used Art to communicate, explain the world around them, and honor their dead.

• The class was divided into groups of 4-5 students. Students had to choose their group based on various skills, rather than friendships. For example, making sure they had someone strong at drawing, another strong in hieroglyphic, etc. (This is a gaming philosophy, btw )
• One student was the Scribe, the official note taker for the group. They began with the mummy's identity and back story. They had a lot of fun with that!
• Students explored a wide variety of resources to pull historical information: teacher handouts, books, websites, etc.

Tech (student choice): research, brainstorming and sketching final draft.

• using their iPads, many students chose to work in Pic Collage (building collages of important features), others chose to take screen shots of mummy coffins photographs of their face and brought those into Sketchbook Express. Others kept Notes, or worked in Educreations. Some sketched their ideas in Inspire Pro or Sketchbook Express.

Or, some chose to create sketches with paper and art supplies. The scribe then took a picture of this.

Project: After tracing a group member, students have begun creating a life sized mummy coffin focusing on pattern and symmetry. They must use historical references.

Where we are heading:
Students are discussing color materials option (they have ruled out oil pastels, but I might show them the special metallic ones for final details! yay!)

They have a few weeks ahead of drawing and adding color. Neatness!

Cool Observations: I have done this project in different ways over the last 20 years. The planning/researching/sketching stage normally took about 3 weeks. This time, with the tech, it took a week and a half. That means more time to create the art, and we are all pretty excited about that.

Research...

Tracing...

Creating...

3rd Grade:
Optical Illusions
Guiding Idea: Warm and cool colors can create depth

Lesson: using shape and advanced color theory, students are to create an optical illusion demonstrating depth. (Special 3D glasses from Sax are used to help the kids see this! They love it!)

Students reviewed art from the Renaissance and the laws of perspective.

Tech: Students used various art apps to help plan their color scheme and compositions, quickly demonstrating mastery of using smaller shapes and cool colors in the background, and larger shapes and warmer colors in the foreground.

Cool Observations: the digital component explained these complicated color concepts in no time. They got it, and got it quickly. No more lengthy color theory experiments. They didn't need it.

This student is using Doodle Dandy to create a symmetrical design. You can achieve this in Sketchbook Express as well.

Students chose their own materials. Many used markers, which I admit, looks awesome.

On-going student assessment: they hang their unfinished work on the board and look for the weak areas. Oh, and it's sideways. Oops.

Checking their work with 3D glasses!

These students are working on their ideas using the document camera so the whole class can contribute.

Kindergarten and 1st Grade: My pre-Assessments are done. Now, look at their first time with Free Choice Centers and a tutorial on using Sketchbook Express (1st grade) Check this out.

These 1st graders are creating a landscape in Sketchbook Express (the student at the top is using Drawing Pad). They needed almost no tutorial. It's like the tech knowledge was intrinsically there. In their brain. Weeeeiiiird.

Kinder is exploring their inner artist with a wide variety of cool options.

If you are tracking me on Tech Blooms, we are at the bottom: substitution. Because it's September. At that's where we should be.

What I learned this week: these kids totally understand parts of technology that normally would take me some time and head scratching to figure out. They had to teach me some things about layers that I forgot about, and it was the first time they had seen them.

How cool is that?