Color Acrostics

With a million and one things to still do before school lets out next week, I completely forgot to post these bad boys, but I definitely like how the lesson went, so better late than never… I think that’s my slogan these days.

Anyway, as part of our introduction to poetry last month we did acrostic poems with colors as a theme rather than the traditional name poems. I like doing acrostic poems, but I find that they are generally too easy for my 6^th graders. I decided this year to try to challenge them to come up with something more abstract. Each of them drew a color from the hat, brainstormed words to describe that color, then scoured a stack of old magazines for items to match. Here’s what we came up with!

Book Page Art Poems

I've seen variations of this project floating around on pinterest for quite some time now and thought it would be a perfect addition to our poetry unit (although it could be adapted to other areas of language arts). We all have a book or two that is beyond salvageable our classroom or library right? Well, don’t be so quick to throw them out because they can be turned into these beautiful works of art quite easily.

For ours, I had a really old, worn out copy of The Wind in the Willows that I used as a course book last year. I picked this particular copy up at a used bookstore when I was home for Christmas last year; I think I may have spent a whole dollar on it. 

Anyway, it was in rough shape so I tore several pages out and told the students to take a couple of pages and search for words that stood out that could make a poem and circle those words lightly in pencil. It was not an easy task for everyone, but I liked watching them struggle a bit with the challenge. Is that bad? Of course I was there to help them along, but I really wanted them to start thinking about poetry in a different context. Some of them are stuck in the it-has-to-rhyme stage and I wanted to help them see beyond that.

Once the words were found, I showed them a few examples of recycled book art and let them choose the style they liked best. I put a basket of glitter pens, black fountain pens, and chalk out for them to experiment with on their pages, and here’s what they came up with.

Pretty awesome, right? I highly recommend this one!

Haiku- Mixed Media Art Journals

Well, we’re a couple weeks into our poetry unit here, and things are going great. We covered the elements of poetry and have now ventures into the thick of it with acrostic, concrete, and haiku poems. I wanted to share our haiku project from today because I was really impressed with their effort on this one.

It’s not every day that your students can grasp a concept like subtlety, and then show you that they GET IT. It is a beautiful thing, my friends. Anyway, so after we learned a little about the history and structure of haikus, we split the class into different seasons and started brainstorming ways to describe nature in those seasons. Then, once we felt like we had enough descriptive words down, they went to work making their own seasonal haikus.

Later for art, we looked at some really great examples of mixed media and art journal pages so they could get a visual of what our goal was, and started exploring with texture, color, and technique. I allowed them to use any medium that we’d worked with this year, including drawing/sketching, painting (watercolor & acrylic), doodling, collage, stenciling, and sponging. I had to keep reminding them that mistakes could be covered, and that layers were what make mixed media so cool. Once they got that, the awesomeness started to emerge… Check out s couple of them below. Have a splendid weekend!

Spring!

Summer!

Winter!

Fall coming soon!

Mother's Day Poems

Happy Friday, everyone! Well, at least for those of us living in Asia. It’s May and the rainy season is upon us once again, which means I’ll be sporting wet shoes and a poncho for the next couple of months. It really makes me miss having a vehicle with doors and a roof, but hey, it’s just water, right?

This weekend is Mother’s Day, and coincidently, we’ve just started our poetry unit, so I thought- what better way celebrate mom than with a beautiful poem? In language arts we’ve been learning about figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors, so we read some poems that use figurative language just to get some ideas. Then, we brainstormed a list of adjectives that we use to describe our moms.

Later for art, we created a watercolor floral border to publish out poems on… I got the idea for this project here. Here’s a few snapshot of our pieces today.

Happy Mom’s Day to all you fierce females out there. Hope you have a great weekend!

Start with watercolor- be sure to leave a space for your poem!

Any color combo will do...

Once it dries, draw over it with a fine-tip permanent marker or fountain pen (0.5mm)

It's up to you how light or dark the flowers.

Add the final draft of your poem.

Voila! Mother's Day Gift, boss status.

Paint like an Egyptian

Last week’s art lesson was too good not to post… As you know, we’ve been studying ancient civilizations, specifically the ancient Egyptians, and what unit would be complete without a look at the influence of art?

Because the ancient Egyptians were the first to introduce written language through hieroglyphics and because the symbolism used by the Egyptians is relatively easy to replicate, I decided to let it guide us through art last week. I found this lesson over at Ms. Picasso’s art room. Check it out here. Here’s what we did:

Find a god/goddess-inspired picture that you like and transfer the image with pencil onto a nice, thick piece of paper. You can also add a couple of hieroglyphic symbols around the picture just to jazz it up. After your drawing is complete, trace over the pencil with a black permanent marker. * Make sure you use permanent marker or else it will bleed later on when you add watercolor* Once your black marker outline is complete, sponge paint over it with brown, yellow, and/or orange acrylic paints until it looks old. Finally, once the acrylic paints have dried, apply just a splash of watercolor to a few parts of the piece… be sure not to overdo it with the color as you want it to look as authentic as possible. Here are a few of our completed pieces. I think they turned out great, what do you think?

 

 

Ancient Egypt Lapbook

Sorry about my absence, folks. It’s been a whirlwind of a week here with history, literacy month, field trips, and upcoming parent-teacher conferences. I don’t have a whole lot of time to post this, but I really wanted to share these super awesome lapbooks that we started last week for our unit on ancient civilizations. I got the idea here, and adapted it a bit to meet the needs of my own classroom.

What I love about lapbooks and foldables is that they are fun and engaging for even the most hesitant of learners. I find that when you leave it up to them to be the researcher, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what stuff they come up with. Plus, these projects make for the perfect lesson on summarization and being concise with language because there’s not a lot of writing space available. This forces them to ask themselves essential questions like Is this information relevant? and Is this information important?

In my class, we divided up the research into categories- new vocabulary, daily life, religion, mummies, pyramids, geography, Nile, hieroglyphics, and jobs. Then, we all took a category and went to work researching and collecting data in our theme notebooks. Once we were done researching, we came together as a class and shared our findings, being sure to sift out the “meaty” bits that we’d copy into our lapbooks. We aren’t quite finished with them yet, but they are really coming together nicely and I wanted to share this small victoryJ I hope you’re all enjoying your week. Check out the pictures below!

 

Landscapes- David Hockney Style

A few months back, I took a wine and canvas class at our local art studio. It was so much fun, and I was so inspired, that I decided to replicate it (not the wine part, of course) in my classroom. I’ve been saving this project for the second semester as a sort of reward for making it through the first half of the year, and it just so happens that it matched up perfectly with our earth science unit.

The theme of the lesson was landscapes and how the beauty of nature is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. Landscape art and artists are as varied as they come, from Monet to Van Gogh to Kandinsky to Matisse; all the great artists seem to have had an interpretation of nature. And why wouldn’t they? So we looked at different styles and interpretations of landscape art and we looked more in-depth at David Hockney who is known for his use of vibrant colors in landscapes. The kids then chose a landscape they wanted to paint, and we went from there.

This art project was quite an undertaking, and I’m not sure I would do it again, despite the fact that they turned out beautifully. I suppose I underestimated the time and effort it would take to get the quality outcome that I wanted. The kids were running out of steam at the end of our third session, and that’s never a good thing in art, because then they rush to finish it. It was, however, a good practice in patience and delayed gratification, which I suppose is beneficial for all of us at times. Here are some shots from start to finish. Hope you enjoy them!

 

Student-led art lessons

One of the things that I love about teaching older kids is the level of projects that they can handle. Their creative minds are so open to trying new ideas and exploring new options. It’s so cool to see what they come up with.

This month, in keeping with the geography theme, I’ve assigned a neat project for art that allows them to be the teacher. Basically, they have to choose a famous artist, time period, or piece of art and teach the other students about it. Then, they do a demonstration on how to re-create that style and that’s our art lesson for the week. Today’s the first student art lesson, so I’ll let you know how it goes… Here are the guidelines and rubric that I made for this project. Have a great weekend everyone!

Art Project Guidelines

Deck the hallways

Even though it’s not beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Vietnam, we are doing our best to get into the holiday spirit around school. In my class, we’ve been practicing our performances for the Christmas concert, delivering donated gifts to a local hospital, and even writing letters to Santa. Aside from trying to wrap up the academic side of things for the semester, there are also a lot of things to physically prepare around school like hanging hallway decorations, making props for the concert, and, of course, transforming your door into something Christmas-y themed. I have to admit that I’m not excited about all of the extra work that has to be done this time of the year, but it is really neat for the kiddos.  

This year, I don’t have an assistant so when they announced that we had to start putting up decorations, I panicked. Over the next two days, everyone’s doors were decked out in snowmen, reindeer, and every other imaginable holiday icon. I was officially the last one to tackle the door project, leaving me with limited options. That meant 2 things; 1- that I’d better hurry up and get something on the door, and 2- that mine had to be better than the others. Challenge accepted! I grabbed my kids on Friday afternoon and we came up with a few ideas about what we could do to win the unspoken door decoration competition that I’d created in my head. Luckily, I had an hour and a half block for art on Friday and was able to get my students to do the brunt of the work during that time. They were just like elves, working away all day to help make our class door the best in school. Here’s a picture of the (nearly) completed masterpiece…

Salt Dough Ornaments

Hard to believe it’s Christmas time again already, but it’s true. To get the kiddos in the Christmas spirit, we’ve been practicing our carols, decking the hallways, and (my favorite) making those cheesy ornaments for mom. I’m pretty sure my mom’s still got the ones I made when I was in elementary school hanging on her tree. I’ll have to remember to ask. Anywho, they’ve assigned me to the afterschool Art Attack club and we’ve been working away like elves trying to get these holiday decorations ready to go before the big concert in 2 weeks. What I love about these is that they appeal to all ages. I mean really, who doesn’t love baking and painting?

If you’ve never made salt dough ornaments, you haven’t been living should try it! Here’s the recipe and a few pictures from art club. Enjoy!

Leaf Art

Sorry for the delay, folks. We have been incredibly busy this week trying to get the kids back into school mode after their week off. Not an easy task, I assure you. Anyway, we’ve kicked off our life science unit with some really exciting stuff. Here’s some art we did earlier today.

We’ve been talking all week about ecosystems, biomes, food webs, and habitats around the world and right here in Vietnam. Because it’s the end of the rainy season, the plants are insanely green and lush so I thought it would be a great day to do our art class in the elementsJ We headed downstairs to find a place to plop down and start our sketches. Here’s a few of those:

 

Later, we collected some samples (to use for our lesson on classification in the afternoon), headed back upstairs and broke out the watercolors. I don’t know why, but every time that I try to do a watercolor lesson, my students insist on using too much paint and not nearly enough water. I must remember to stress this more in the future. Anyway, they had fun and the art turned out ok too. I’d say that’s a win for everyone. Here are a few more shots from the second part of our lesson:

 

Happy Friday y’all!

Halloween Fun

This week we have what we call non-pupil week. Basically, it’s a full week without students designated to staff development, training, and time to get caught up on some things and prepare for what’s left of our first semester. This week couldn’t have come soon enough because I am worn out from all of the International Day and Halloween festivities!

All last week, we did Halloween themed activities including reading and writing scary stories, spooky word problems in math, and even an ICT lesson where the students created a flyer advertising the Halloween carnival on Friday. It was a ton of fun, but I’m glad it’s over.

Halloween Word Problems-

We did a review of dividing decimals with a Halloween twist. You can steal the worksheet here.

Trick or Treat Bags-

Keeping with the holiday tradition, our school sets up a route around campus for all the students to go trick or treating. Each class has to make their own little baskets or bags for collecting candy. Here’s what we did:

1.      Start with a standard A4 thick paper. We used white because we wanted to decorate them for Halloween, but you can use any color you want.

2.      Turn the paper horizontally and fold each side toward the middle making sure there’s a little overlap. Glue or tape your seam.

3.      Turn it vertically and fold the bottom up about 5cm.

4.      Open the bottom section and fold down to make 2 triangles.

5.      Fold in the tops and bottoms of the triangle making sure to overlap a little for gluing or taping.

 

6.      Punch two holes in the top for your ribbon handles.

7.      Choose your ribbon and decorations.

8.      Viola! You have one super cute trick or treat bag. Or small, personalized gift bag.

DIY Ring Toss-

 Part of my job every year is to come up with a carnival game for Halloween and International Day. Last year, I remember the games being a little too easy for my students because they’re the oldest, so this year I wanted to try something a bit more challenging. I used to love going to the carnival or state fair when it was in town and all those fun games that were nearly impossible to win, but still fun as hell to play. That was my inspiration for this year’s booth- The Wicked Ring Toss.

All you need are some empty beer bottles and small plastic rings and you’re in business. Here’s a picture of mine all finished:

 

·         WARNING: This game is A LOT harder than it looks. Not recommended for kindergartenJ

Paper Pumpkin Mosaics-

Every Thursday, I run an after-school Art Club with students from Grade 2-4 and every Thursday I get headaches. I haven’t figured out if these two things are related, but I think it’s a safe assumption. Anyway, the club is only 45 minutes so I wanted a project that they could actually finish. Behold, paper pumpkin mosaics. It’s not my best art lesson, but they seemed to enjoy themselves and hey, we finished.

 

Scary Short Stories-

As promised, here are a couple of the finished narrative pieces from last week.

Scary Story 1

Scary Story 2

FIS Halloween Pics-

Here's a few pictures from Friday's festivities... Hope you all have a great Halloween!