Interpreting the Lorax

 The Lorax movie and book are very popular with the 1st grade so we planned a project to tell a part of the story. This combines drawing and using a variety of materials. Students had fuzzy balls for the lorax's hair and beard, cardboard for the tree stump, and feathers for the truffula trees. Some wrote messages. Others got more modern and made the lorax a girl. Interesting telling of the tale and comments on protecting trees.

Drawing emotions with color

 The day before class a picture "the scream" sold at auction. I shared this picture with the students in the 2nd and 3rd grade for discussion. They were not very impressed with the picture as a favorite type of artwork.
Next they were to do a drawing of a person expressing emotion using the drawing and color.One pair of students did opposite emotions.   It took a bit of discussion but they got the concept and did a great job on these. When we tried it last year early in the 2nd grade it was not such a success as it seemed the concept was too abstract for them.

Earth month projects begin with spaceships and cute caterpillars

 All of the classes have studied space and planets during the last few weeks so to kick off a month of projects made from recycled, reused or re-purposed items the 1st and 2nd grades created spaceships. They were given paper towel tubes, tp tubes, paper egg cups, egg cartons, streamers, ribbons, and scrap paper. It was up to them how to craft their space ship. There were quite a variety produced and each is different (copied ideas aside.) The 2nd grade wanted to fly theirs, the 1st grade wanted to wear them.  Interesting wing arrangements and quite a few have pilots or passengers.
The kindergarten got to do another critter--this time a caterpillar. We used water bottle, donated paper cut into strips, & old gift wrap. The kids made their own eyes, mouths and noses were left-over bits of tissue paper. We did add colored chenille stems for antena.

Kindergarten has patriotic themes

 We have had some fun with the patriotic themes in February creating flags, Liberty statues, and stick puppets of Lincoln and Washington for president's day. The kids are getting pretty good at following more complicated directions and filling in the blanks. They were able to do alternating stripes for the flags and most breezed through the stars. Those that had a bit of trouble still managed some pretty good stars. They were concerned that the examples did not have faces and put faces on all the puppets and the liberty lady. She even has her torch. 

2nd grade paints landscapes

This was a project that we really looked forward to doing. This class likes to paint and draw so having them do a landscape painting was a natural. I brought in a few that I had painted as examples. We discussed what kind of elements would be in a landscape and began. They used 1/2 sheets of stiff cardboard for their paintings. Each drew the landscape then painted them learning how to make clouds more fluffy, making waterfalls with a bit of movement, painting birds, and making a foggy sky. I think they did a remarkable job on them.

3rd grade Makes ecosystems

 This is a project that we have done before and it works well. We used smaller groups this year and did more projects which seemed to work better. The project starts with naming the ecosystems and choosing the one they want to create. We used plastic vegetable containers about 4"x8" and around 4-5" tall. The students created all the elements of the system on the lid so when closed it was like a small diorama. They created animals and other elements using clay and construction paper. Each is labeled as to the system and what elements are comprised within it. Some are quite detailed, others take a bit of imagination to confirm the elements within. 

more clay creations

We are spending the month of January working with clay. Sometimes this medium really lends itself to integrating into the lessons as with the plant parts for the kindergarten. Each student got a 3x5" note card as a base and a ball of salt clay. We discussed plant parts and drew a plant on the board then they were off. Each was to include all the parts on their plant remembering to include roots and seeds. They are pretty good at the proportions on these. When the plants were completed we used washable markers to color them with pretty great results.

The 1st grade created a 3D map with most of the correct elements. We had a discussion of which would be on a map and which would not. The volcanoes, train tracks, roads and rivers would. Trees might although not in as great of detail as some of the trees acquired. People and animals would not appear. They completed the project by giving it some color using water color boxes. It was a bit messy but turned out well. This is a different clay than we used in the past made with cornstarch as I was given a 50# bag of it.

The 2nd grade is studying landmarks so we created replicas of several of them using the soda/cornstarch clay, chenille stems and toothpicks. We determined that Mt. Rushmore was going to be too hard to create but Natural bridge, Washington's monument and a few others fit the bill. The monuments never had such color before though!

Lastly the 3rd grade got to add a bit of color to their vertebrates from last week using watercolors. They were really great creations and the color was just what they needed.