Kandinsky Trees

Here I am near the end of my student teaching assignment and I haven't posted near as much as I wanted to... In fact, I'm already more than halfway done at the high school and I haven't even posted all of my elementary projects. Student teaching has proven far more exhausting than I thought, leaving me little time to blog.  I do still want to post each assignment so I will start playing catch up now, since I seem to have a little more free time teaching high school than I did with my elementary assignment.

The first (and main) project I did with first grade was Kandinsky trees. I found this idea on the internet (but I can't remember from where, sorry!) and adapted it to make it my own. First, I showed the students a PowerPoint about the Russian abstract artist, Wassily Kandinsky. We learned about his love of color, his tendency for visible brushstrokes, and his evolution towards abstract art. The kids loved his artwork and were thrilled to try to pick out shapes and images from his abstract work - sort of like when you see images in clouds. We focused on his "Squares with Concentric Circles," and talked about warm vs cool colors and how they can create contrast when placed next to each other. Since it was winter (and we were theoretically in Russia, studying a Russian artist, and getting our Art passports stamped for the country) we talked about what kinds of trees we might find in Russia such as the winter trees that lose their leaves. What would Kandinsky think of these trees? We decided that since he loved color so much that he'd probably wish that the drab winter trees were more colorful. So we decided to add some color...

First, I had the students practice drawing trees in their sketchbooks with charcoal. I figured it was a new medium for the first graders so they would benefit from the practice and seeing how the charcoal felt in their hand and performed on paper. They were pretty interested in the new material and followed along with me as I drew a winter tree at the front of the class. Then they drew a winter tree in charcoal on watercolor paper as I encouraged effective use of space and we talked about how the trunk is bigger at the bottom and how the branches come off from the trunk. Then they used oil pastel in shades of brown, with some black, grey, and white added to help create visual texture and shading. Once the students were finished with their trees, they watercolor over the whole thing in shades of blue and purple using the oil pastel as a resist for the watercolor. For a final touch, we used Kandinsky's "Squares with Concentric Circles" as inspiration. After a demonstration, I gave the tables of students three sizes of circle stencils. They were to cut out circles of different shapes and layer them together, preferrably alternating warm and cool colors. Each layered circle was then glued onto a tree branch giving these winter trees some Kandinsky color. The results were beautiful and I was very impressed with what these young artists created.

My example:

Student examples:

Year of the Dragon

This week has left me exhausted. I think it has to do, in part, with the cold I'm trying to get over, but I did have a lot of work this week too. Or maybe it's still not used to getting up at 6 am... though once I start my high school assignment, I'll have to get up at 5, so I'd better get used to it, lol! Anyway, I left school yesterday feeling good about the week. I think I'm definitely more relaxed in front of the students and my lessons seem to be going well. I'm still trying to work out how to best distribute materials, transition during the lesson, and allow enough time to clean up at the end. It will come with practice though and I think I'm getting better in general.

The kindergarteners are finishing up their dragon puppets. In honor of Chinese New Year, which was January 23rd this year and also happened to be the year of the dragon, my first lesson with Kindergarten was to make paper bag dragon puppets. First we viewed a PowerPoint on Chinese dragons in art, talking about how they are traditionally made up of several different animals. We also talked about the dragon dances in the Chinese New Year celebrations, relating back to the video they saw the week before. The kids were pretty excited when I told them that they would be making their own dragon puppets, but on a much smaller scale than the large ones in the dragon dance.

First I showed them how to make the bodies look like they had the scales of a fish by cutting fringe into strips of tissue paper and overlapping the strips onto the paper bags. Having to teach the lesson to four classes was good practice for me to see what kind of demonstration techniques worked and how to make things better for the next class. Some of the kids understood the concept fairly quickly while others needed more individualized attention. I found it worked best when I would explain just one or two steps, demonstrate it a few times, then leave something out - like the fringing - as I started to do the next one. One or two of the kids would call out - no! - and then I'd have them tell me what needed to be done, reinforcing the correct way to do it. Once they got their materials, we'd do a few together, stopping to make sure everyone was doing it correctly and understood what to do before moving on, and then they were on their own as I walked around to make sure everyone was working okay. Most of them grasped the concept pretty well, though there were a few that would need redirection.

Once we were finished with the fringe, the students colored dragon faces and then I showed them how to make a mane and further decorate the body with curled strips of paper by rolling the paper onto a crayon. Smaller strips of paper were added under the head for a beard. These turned out amazing and I was pretty impressed by what the kindergarteners were able to create. I also did this lesson with the Adapted Art kids, simplifying some of the steps. They were impressive as well.

My example:

Kindergarten examples:

Adapted Art example:

Passport to Art

My first two weeks of student teaching have gone pretty well, I think. The hardest part for me so far is getting used to the schedule and getting up so early. Going from a stay-at-home mom to basically working a full-time job will need some getting used to, I guess. The first three days of school were pretty easy. The kids were just coming back from Christmas break and my co-op wanted to keep things somewhat mellow for them to ease back into the swing of things. Most of the kids watched a video on Chinese New Year - which they loved - and 2nd grade worked a little on their Kachina dolls since they were getting a bit behind on them. So I basically just tried to get accustomed to the schedule and typical routines while I helped out in the classroom.

At the end of my first week, I taught my first lesson to Kindergarten and 1st grade. It was a really easy, introductory lesson based on an idea I got from my Methods professor - an Art Passport. I had made a bunch of little booklets at home out of construction and copy paper before my student teaching assignment and the kids seemed pretty excited to be "visiting" other countries to learn about their art. We did the writing part together and I had them make a self-portrait on the inside. I really love how they turned out! The kids are really eager to have their passports stamped for their next lessons, too.

I really am having a lot of fun student teaching. It is a lot of work though and sometimes I have a hard time managing my time effectively. That'll take some practice. But I think I've finalized in my mind - and some of it on paper - what I'm going to do with all the grade levels. I'm pretty excited and I can't wait to see how it all turns out.