Using Thinglink to Think about Social Studies and Art...

Here's another image I made using Thinglink.com (I'm a little obsessed with it!). I thought I'd make an example to show how it could be used for a flipped classroom situation or as a hook to get students thinking and writing about Social Studies. 

You could create a clickable image and keep it private on Thinglink--that means that only people who have the link can see it. You could have your students log in, check out the image (watch videos, visit websites you link to the image, etc.) and then leave comments below the image. What a great way to get them interested in a subject and breathe life into a stuffy textbook.

ENJOY!

Look at this image. BEFORE you click on the links, think about what you see. What is going on here? What are these people doing? How do they feel?

Now, click on the image and explore the links to find more information...

After exploring, write a comment below this blogpost about what YOU think this image is about (at least two sentences). Be prepared to discuss...

Integrated Arts: Postcard Activity

The undergrad teaching students I work with at Plymouth State University had a week-long practicum experience in elementary and middle school a few weeks ago. When they came back, their professor advised me that they'd be bursting with anecdotes and stories about their week. Their professor had a field trip with another class their first day back, so I substituted for her. Of course, because I'm an art teacher, I had to put a twist on the lesson!

When I am presenting any sort of lesson to the future K-8 teachers, I try to have them learn using a lesson they could adapt in their own classrooms later on. This is a perfect example! This lesson allowed them to share with their professor the following:

• One success
• One thing they learned
• One thing they need to work on

This allowed them to analyze, summarize, and "tell" their professor about their experience. A part of this was also learning about the parts of a postcard--such as address, stamp, greeting, closing, and signature--a skill they all knew, but something that is valuable for younger students to learn. They used the free postcard generator on www.ReadWriteThink.org--a wonderful website I wanted them to be aware of.

Then, they needed to "show" their practicum experience. They could bring photos printed in color, or they could use the lab to search and print photos. I suggested the following images:

• Photos of the school they were at (they could take the photos themselves or pull them from the school's website)
• Photos of any projects they did

We only had a black and white printer in the lab, so I showed them how they could colorize the b&w photos using colored pencils. They needed to mount the finished front and back of their postcards onto a 9x12" piece of construction paper and then they were allowed to embellish their pieces. I had brought colored pencils, stickers, scrapbook page borders, and colored pieces of paper along with fancy-edged scissors.

The results are colorful and fun and it was nice to chat with the students about their experiences in the classrooms. Like the proud art teacher, I posted them all over the door and tiny bulletin boards I have on either side at the college.

Before we left, I had the students brainstorm ways they could use a lesson like this in their own classrooms and they had a ton of great ideas such as writing a friend about a math or science concept, writing a postcard from the point of view of a character in a book they've read, or even writing to a penpal in another class (or state or country)! Such great ideas!

So many great projects, but here are a few...ENJOY!

Drawing American Sign Language Hands

My private art lessons are very organic-what we study ebbs and flows with what I think the student would be interested in or in an area they may need to develop further. One day, my student and her mom were discussing a piece my student had done (at home) and there was some, ahem, disagreement as to how readable the hand was in the drawing. After a little more discussion, my student admitted that, although she felt she drew hands perfectly fine, they were "hard" and she "hated drawing them." Hmmmm...well, never one to shy away from a challenge, I tried to think of a way we could practice drawing hands in a way that seemed fun. 

This spells "ART."

So, here's what we did:

The first week, we spent practicing drawing hands in different positions. I found this great tutorial online at Neon Dragon Art that I thought would work well to illustrate the anatomy of the hand as well as seeing a hand as a 3D form from the beginning. We worked our way through the different variations Jessica "Neon Dragon" Peffer presented, using our own hands as "models." It is quite difficult to draw something as complex as the human hand--especially when you don't want to! But we kept trying and trying. We had a couple shaky starts and we needed to keep remembering to look at our 3D models--our own hand, and draw what we saw, not what we thought was there.

Once my student was confident drawing hands in a variety of positions, I brought out the American Sign Language chart that shows the letters of the alphabet using photos of hands. We practiced the letters and she chose a word she wanted illustrate. At first she chose "CREATE" but the thought of drawing 5 more hands (one for each letter of the word) proved too much so she settled on "ART" instead.

She did a great job drawing the hands in pencil and then outlining them in Sharpie. For the background, she chose to do a Jackson Pollock-inspired drippy painting using watercolors and temperas that she drizzles and splattered all over. The colors were custom-mixed--she had a plan--they are her favorite colors.

Once everything was done, she brought the pieces together (making sure the hands were in the correct order). She was very happy with her piece (as am I!) and *hopefully* she'd say it isn't too bad drawing hands after all.

Art and the ABC's of Ecology

I was asked to spend some time with 4-year-olds and talk about ECOLOGY. I said "YES!" and then ran to my computer to look up what "Ecology" was!

Ecology is: 1. the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another, and 2. The study of the interaction of people with their environment.

You'd "B" Crazy Not To Try This Recycling Craft! (GROAN!)

I started off having the children play with blocks. We talked about how we needed to share the blocks. If one person took all of the blocks, there wouldn't be enough for everyone. This is a good way to illustrate the concept of REDUCE. If you use less, everyone can have some. Then I talked a bit about how people and nature can be connected. If we go on a picnic and throw our trash on the ground it will dirty up the environment and outside is where animals live--it is their home! Imagine our homes filled with trash! YUCK!

So we went outside with a shopping bag and looked for trash. They were good at that game and found quite a bit! We also talked about biodegradable vs. non-biodegradable. Leaves will break down over time, but a plastic coffee cup will not.

We went back inside and I introduced the next concept: RECYCLE. If we threw everything away or landfills will fill up quickly, and some of the stuff we throw away is still good or can be turned into something else. For example, water bottles can be turned into Polar Fleece fabric. I had a bunch of different recyclables on hand, in a pile, to show them. I had a ton of categories for them to sort the recyclables into (our town has a wonderful recycling center!). I had seven bins with labels such as:

1. Paper
2. Plastic
3. Cardboard (Corrugated)
4. Steel Cans
5. Aluminum Cans (Soda cans)
6. Newspaper/Magazines
7. Glass (be careful with that!)

Here are my basic labels for the Recycling Bins

Then they sorted the recyclables into the appropriate bins. This went quite fast! I explained that other things can also be recycled: clothing, books and toys, by giving them away to someone who may need them.

On to the art project!

Recycled Letters

Supplies Needed:

• Poster board (we used black)
• Scraps of construction paper, magazines, newspapers, labels from cans, etc.
• Glue stick
• Scissors (young children can rip the paper if they aren't ready for scissors).

Directions:

1. Cut the first letter of the child's name from poster board. It should be about 10 inches tall and wide enough so that s/he has space to glue paper to the surface.

2. Have the child use the glue stick to attach bits of paper to the surface of the letter.

This project REUSES paper that normally would have been thrown away.

We then went back to the pond onsite and looked for trash and critters. We found water bugs and a frog and we also saw trash that we couldn't reach, floating in the pond, such as a tennis ball. This allowed me to reiterate the information I had talked about earlier about how humans and nature are connected and how our actions affect other living things.

Home Connections

To strengthen the learning this lesson at home, parents can do the following:

• Discuss with children how they can be kind and not so kind to the environment.
• Set up a recycling station at home and visit the Recycling Center in their town.
• Look through outgrown toys, books and clothing and donate the items to those in need.
• Go on a hike and/or picnic and be good stewards by staying on the paths and carrying out their trash and disposing of it properly.

Lemon Still Life

A couple weeks back I started summer lessons working with a very talented young lady...this little girl is going into third grade in the fall and over the summer we'll be working on refining her drawing skills. I'm so excited to be working with her!

For our first lesson, I decided to have her do a still life with lemons. The lesson was a nice way for us to chat and get to know one another while talking about art concepts such as shape, form, balance, symmetry and so much more! She was very interested in drawing the lemon segments and we had a wonderful discussion about the colors we saw in the lemon peel and the shadows!

Lemons on drawing paper using colored pencils

I had her sketch the lemons using graphite and then add color using watercolor pencils. She could then soften the color by adding water (she didn't want to--she liked the look of the pencil lines).

We finished that up pretty quickly and I introduced her to a new (to me) technique I have been laying around with. We tried out this new technique using just one lemon, to keep it simple. She drew the lemon using craypas, or oil pastels, and then used baby oil on a Q-tip to smudge the colors and blend them. Boy, I remember using turpentine with oil pastels in high school-YUCK! What a smell and mess (at least for this watercolorist!).

She then used watercolor to add a wash of color to the background (the oil pastels act as a resist for the watercolor, so she could just paint over the entire image). She really enjoyed working with that medium and we decided our next lesson would use that technique. I can't wait!

Lemon done using the craypas/baby oil technique on watercolor paper

Math & Art & Giant Cake!

Before school let out I was able to squeak in projects with two of the teachers at a local elementary school. I had tons of fun doing both projects! Here's the first...

The first was with Mrs. Nagy and her fourth grade class. We made 3D food sculptures inspired by the work of Claes Oldenburg. My original project idea appears here. But with this class, I limited the children to creating a slice of cake or pie so that we could study the math concepts associated with those shapes.

Mmmm...blueberry swirl cake!

I know, I know, math and art together? SIGH....isn't that going to be a bit, ahem, boring? Not at all! Here's how it's done...

I started with MY favorite part: the ART. I gave a short presentation on the work of Oldenburg and showed some examples of his sculptures.

Then, we focused on my other favorite part of this lesson: the FOOD part. We looked at some yummy examples of Oldenburg's sculptures such as the big soft sculpture of chocolate cake. These portions of the presentation allowed me to talk about art concepts such as sculpture, soft sculpture, form, scale, surface and design. We also discussed placement of art in certain environments.

Then we got down to the MATH portion of the exercise. Don't worry, it's a "piece of cake" to create a piece of cake (come on, I HAD too!)! We created our 3D cakes from a 2D surface: a piece of paper. Our cakes are made from two equilateral triangles and have three square sides. This solid form is called a triangular prism. I brought in some other solids that the children would easily know for comarison: a pyramid, a sphere, a cone, a cube and a rectangular prism.

I had the students begin the construction of their pieces of cake by creating two identical equilateral triangles (one for the top of the cake and one for the bottom). Ours are 9" on each side. The children then figured out how big the sides of the cake needed to be. That led them to create three 9" squares (one for each side of the cake slice). This is where the discussion of height, width and depth can come in.

The children then attached the pieces together using staplers to make "seams" and stuffed their sculptures with crumpled newspaper before sealing the solids up (more info about this can be found in my earlier, related post).

WHEW! Cake slice made! Then, the children happily "decorated" their cakes using tempera paints. It was lovely to see al of the awesome cakes they made: chocolate tortes, red velvet, chocolate cake with vanilla frosting--YUM!

If your group is very comfortable with these math concepts (as was this group), you can try your hand at making a slice of pie. Make the top and bottom equilateral triangles (two 9" equilateral triangles were used by these students), but reduce the height of the sides of the sculptures (ours were 4.5" x 9") because pie is generally not as tall as cake. Proceed as above to create the solid and stuff the sculpture and decorate it accordingly. These students created chocolate cream pie, key lime pie and cherry pie.

This is a wonderful exercise illustrating all sorts of math concepts in an easy-to-understand and enjoyable way. It really does combine art and math perfectly and it's FUN! I hope you are able to try it with your kiddos!

Cherry and blueberry pie--great lattice tops!
(Sorry the photo is blurry, but you get the idea!)

Chocolate torte and black forest pie!

Key lime pie with whipped cream on top! YUM!