Free to Be You & Me

This was our last week of classes this session, and it’s the week before Spring Break, so I wanted to do something a little different in my classes. 

In Tuesday’s Under the Influence class, we briefly reviewed some of the things we learned this session, and then the students were free to draw whatever they wanted, in whatever medium was available. Not having a lesson was a challenge to a few of them, as it was very difficult for them to decide what to draw, but eventually everyone came up with something.

Thursday I was planning to do the same thing. Before class I found out the Movie Making after school class was premiering their movie in the auditorium. So after drawing for a bit, we took a “field trip” to see “The Dark Side of the School....the story of the Fluffy Ruler”—or some such title I can’t seem to remember. It was a fun show and looks like a great clss. When we returned to the room, everyone was ready to finish up their pictures. I enjoyed seeing the variety of subjects drawn and processes used to complete them.

Some Sweet Art

Wayne Thiebaud is the artist we learned about in Under the Influence this week. He's an American artist who is associated with the Pop art movement, repeating everyday objects, such as cakes, lipsticks and gumball machines. I showed the students some samples and had them point out some themes. They came up with "bright colors, repetition and food."

Then I showed them how to make a replica of an image by drawing it first and then turning the paper over onto a new sheet and drawing on the back so the pencil gets transferred to the new sheet. This was difficult for some of them, but when it worked, they were thrilled. I also gave them the option of cutting out a stencil and tracing it or cutting out a few of the repeated shapes and pasting them down. Most of them wanted to try the transfer technique.

Something from Nothing

This week in PreK Art Lunch, we read one of my favorite books, "Joseph Had a Little Overcoat," about a man who had an overcoat that got old and worn. So he turned it into a jacket. When the jacket got old and worn he turned it into a vest. When the vest got old and worn he turned it into a scarf and so on and so on. The book is neat because there are cutouts throughout, showing the cloth getting smaller and smaller, until all that's left is a little button. At the very end, Joseph loses the button, so he is left with nothing. So what does he do? He writes a book about it and shows how you can make something out of nothing.

The other book we read was based on The Emperor's New Clothes, which in its own way, is about making something out of nothing—or is it about making nothing out of something? Either way, we made little people, complete with clothes made of actual cloth and buttons for accents.

Lunch with Mr. Pine

Mr. Pine's Purple House was one of my favorite books when I was little. When I had kids of my own, I put it on hold at the library and was happy to find it was as cute as I remembered. When I started teaching this class, I thought Mr. Pine's Purple House would be a perfect book to share.

First we talked about our own homes and what colors the buildings are where we live. Nobody in the group had ever seen a purple house.

The book is about Mr. Pine, who lives on Vine Street, where there are 50 white houses, all in a line. How can Mr. Pine tell which house is his? First, he plants a pine tree in his front yard. All of his neighbors love it, and they all copy him. So now there are 50 white houses with 50 pine trees. So he plants a bush. You guessed it...all of his neighbors do the same.

Finally, Mr. Pine decides to paint his house—purple. When his neighbors, who happen to have last names of "Green," "Gray" and "Gold" decide to paint their houses, he shouts, "NO! Not 50 purple houses all in a line." But they decide to paint their houses all different colors (which do not coincide with their last names, a little twist I find amusing).

For our project, the children created their own unique houses. If they were to see it on the street, they would surely know it was where they lived.

Welcome to Daliwood

This week we were under the influence of Salvador Dali. After looking at some of his work and discussing surrealism and its dreamlike qualities, the kids were able to pick from a table full of magazine pictures I had previously cut out.

They were to arrange them on their page however they liked, and I encouraged them to draw a background to better illustrate where these objects were—whether they belonged there or not!