Week 6

Welcome back!

This past week I completed my final weekly art project for my arts class. I am very sad to be done with my weekly stress reliever, but my instructor says that we have to move on. She has other projects planned for us. For my final project my medium was "watercolor." I have never thought of myself as a painter, so I was a little hesitant about this medium.

I needed inspiration, so off to my favorite source of inspiration I went. There are millions of ideas on Pinterest so it is my go-to whenever I am in need of ideas for home or for my classroom. I wanted to do something that would incorporate winter, and in the midwest, snow is synonymous with winter. I began to search for snowflake paintings and then I found one that I could easily make in a classroom, the only problem was that it was not really meant for watercolors. It is a painting on canvas and watercolor does not take well to canvas.

I decided to adapt my painting and try the technique on card stock with watercolors. It would have turned out great had the masking tape that I used not tore the card stock.

I liked the painting so much though, that I decided to use the canvas and acrylic paints to create a second painting.

Source: Author's own

This is a photo of my paining on canvas. I love how it turned out! This is still a project that I would be willing to do in a classroom, if I had a smaller class. I would not want to do this kind of project with a class of 25 unless the students' parents helped to cover the cost of the canvas because canvas can get expensive quickly. I am still bummed that the paper tore for my watercolor because I was able to get the shades of blue just right, but I am thrilled that I decided to do one on the canvas.

Until Next Time,

Ms. K

Columbus Day

Welcome back!

With Columbus Day coming up, we were asked to read Morning Girl by Michael Dorris for my Social Studies class. This was a wonderful book about a young girl and her family.

When I began reading it, I could not put it down. It got me thinking about the native people in the story and how their lives would change when the island was "discovered." When lands were discovered in Christopher Columbus' time, often the natives were referred to as "savages" or "uncivilized" and they were forced into Christianity.

Source: Scholastic Books

As a country we celebrate Columbus Day, but what does it really mean? Government offices are not open and there is no post, but what is the bigger picture? In school, children color pictures of the ships that sailed with Christopher Columbus and they make things to honor him, but was he a good person and did he do good things? Students are often not taught anything about Columbus past the idea that he discovered America and the younger children have no idea what consequences that discovery had. So the question remains in my brain...should Columbus Day be celebrated in schools when students only are exposed to a snippet of information?

Until Next Time,

Ms. K

The Crafting Continues...

Welcome back!

As the weeks have progressed, I have been creating more and more art. It has been a lot of fun, but this portion of my arts class has ended (which is very sad for me). I looked forward to my projects each week as a form of stress relief. The first project that I created was my wine cork heart (seen in my September, 14th post).

The second project that I had was "found art." This requires the artist to create art out of something they found. I chose to use sand dollars and shark's teeth that my family and I had found on the beach in Florida.

Source: Author's own

I hot glued the ribbon to the back plate of a shadow box and then hot glued the sand dollars and shark's teeth on. I borrowed this idea from a pin that I found on Pinterest. This project was very simple to make and one that I can easily adapt for the classroom.

Until Next Time,

Ms. K

Community Construction

Welcome back!

Over the past few weeks, we have been constructing our own "town" in my social studies class. This activity allowed the entire class to make decisions about how our town would be laid out and what resources it would have. Together, we came up with a list of services and retailers that would have a place in our community and then we decorated boxes to represent the stores we had chosen. Once all of the boxes were designed, construction began.

Source: Author's own

We voted on where to place some of the stores and also where our industry should be located. This activity encouraged the entire class to work as a team. 

Source: Emily Hess

Source: Author's own

Once our community was built, we sat down around our community and had a very in-depth discussion. We focused on problem-solving: what would happen if our factory polluted our water sources...what if a big-box store wanted to move in and purchase part of the farm?  This activity gave our entire class a common bond. We became rather protective of our town and got upset when anyone outside of our class touched it.

This activity would be fun for a classroom because it provides a common foundation for kids to begin a school year with, encourages team-building, problem-solving, and (let's be real here) it was a blast to create!

Until Next Time,
Ms. K