(masterpieces) Sky

(teacher's note) Kindergarten loves to paint! They are practicing holding their brush properly while they paint nice strokes. Salem painted a fun picture of the sky, covering every part of the page!

Drawings by PreK and Kindergarten

Back in August and September, my third graders drew portraits of their classmates. These were quick drawings, done using a template for facial placement, and modifying the template for the individual features. They drew in pencil first, and then colored it in with crayons. Over a few class periods, each student made about 5 drawings, and we stapled them together into a book. Two slices, above the eyes and below the nose, allowed three parts of the page to turn independently. We made some interesting combinations by only turning some of the parts...

So why am I mentioning this now? Well, the standard crayons created a problem when it came to skin color. The kids dug through all the old crayons to find three peach crayons. Other students used orange, yellow, brown . . . I decided I needed to get the Crayola Multicultural Crayons for next year.

I was able to order the crayons at the end of December. They arrived in early February. It was only a matter of time before I decided to use them. I broke them out one morning for the PreK class. We talked about the word family and what people we might draw in a picture of our family. One little girl really wanted to draw Kim Marie, the teacher's baby girl, but refused to draw her baby brother.

The part I was most curious about was skin choice. Each table had the standard eight colors intermixed with the 8 multicultural colors (six shades of brown, plus a white and black).

Some kids completely disregarded the skin colors and made their family purple, green, blue, etc.

Other kids carefully picked a shade of brown, usually on the lighter end.

Tony was funny. He drew his family members naked first, coloring them in completely with a skin color. When that was finished, he drew clothes on top of them with the standard eight colors.

Another girl cracked me up! Jessica's dad is Caucasian and her mom is Chinese. She and her sister both have black hair, but a lighter skin color than their mother(without the yellow undertones). She used black for hair and peach for skin when drawing herself, her mom, and her sister. When it came to her dad, she drew him using all yellow. Yellow skin, yellow hair. (He does have dirty blonde hair.)

Here are some of the drawings from PreK. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of Jessica's drawing.

The top right picture is Tony's, with clothing added afterwards. Underneath that picture, everyone in Isabel's family has VERY long legs! If you notice the names on those pictures, you might be confused. Rony? Rsabel? The class was learning about the letter R and practicing what their name would sound like if it started with the letter R.


















This week, I did the same activity with my kindergarteners. The families are great, but it was the drawings after the families that ended up being the most interesting!




I think Jerry's drawing of his family became the inspiration for the later drawings by the boys at his table.

I asked him about koa. What does this say? Korea. That was a duh moment for me. Of course. About 2/3 of our students are Korean.

The mention of Korea seemed to inspire Ted, another Korean boy.






World geography might not be the best subject for our kinders. Not surprisingly, Korea is huge! Even our middle schoolers have been known to let out a gasp when they see the actual size of Korea on a map.

I'm not sure about all the countries, but the first three on Ted's map were Korea, China (the C as the top) and India (the i at the top). Japan was added, along with more Korean islands and USA.






The Indian boy sitting between the two Korean boys decided to draw a globe as well. You can see that India grew in size a little in Swayam's map. It's also daytime in this world.

Jerry also joined the globe action for his free draw. Now each table had two sets of the standard eight colors and two packs of the multicultural colors. While the other boys were coloring their oceans (and using the only two blue crayons at the table), Jerry said "I need blue! Is there blue? Oh I have yellow!" and proceeded to color his ocean yellow.



As one of the other teacher's mentioned, we do live on the Yellow Sea (but it's not yellow).

Let's look at the countries on this world. Of course, there's large Korea and many Korean islands. We also have a J for Japan. As he was drawing, he said "oh, Merica!" and labeled an island with an M. Later, he added a U on another island for United States. At the top, there's this u/C thing. Maybe that's China. I forgot to ask about that.

What happened to India? Just check out the moon on the left, and you'll find two circles labelled I. I think the rocket may be in flight to India.





At another table, a European boy, William, drew an airplane for the hundredth time in art class. Whether drawing, painting, or making collages, he makes an airplane once or twice a month. He's quite good at drawing them. You can see all the people inside the plane as it lands. Our kids, being expats in China, are frequent travelers.

Other students began drawing ships, particularly pirate ships. Perhaps this is because the local expat group put on the pantomime Robinson Crusoe just a few weekends ago. Joseph asked me how to spell Robinson Crusoe. I honestly didn't know. I have to look it up every time!

(Side note: Having recently devoted a lot of time to learning pinyin, the Chinese phonetic system, I have a terrible time sounding out long words when I'm trying to remember how to spell them! I was actually trying to spell Crusoe a few weeks ago and couldn't for the life of me figure out the last two letters! The long O sound in Chinese is spelled "ou" always, no exceptions. And the oe combination doesn't exist in pinyin, which might be one reason why I didn't think of it. Just now, I had to google it again and get the correct spelling from "did you mean robinson crusoe?")


Here are some more pirates!


















I love that the two boats on the right are waving the Korean flag! It shows up a lot in my students' artwork. Remember Christmas Tree Korea--made by Jerry's older brother, Fred.

(Did anyone notice Fred's name in Jerry's picture? I let Jerry sound out his brother's name. f is clearly spelled fa. Then an r, which looks more like a v, and a d. Missing the e and the awkward r makes his brother's name look more like Favd, not Fred!)

Back to the pirate ships, I can't figure out what happened with the two on the left. I don't think they were made by the same student. Why would one student redraw the same picture? They don't have names on them, but here's my guess. I think one girl was "inspired" by the pirate ship of the boy on her right, which is how they both ended up with nearly identical pictures.

Inspiration, a topic for a later post!

from my kindergarten ARTIST

A new painting from Rachel ("Miss M., can you tell I'm an artist?)

Kindergarten started class by attempting to mix 8 colors for me and paint them on a worksheet (on top of the printed name). Red, yellow, blue, orange, purple, green, pink, brown. Here was the kicker, they only had red, yellow, blue, and white!

Unlike the 1st grade painting sessions, we spent less time explicitly stating the mixing combos. Instead, I wanted to see how much they'd figured out on their own. Kids were allowed to tell each other what to mix, but each student had to mix their own colors. Some were more successful that others. After they found all 8 colors, they could move onto their painting.

Most students finished early, and since my paper stash was SUPER LOW, I didn't have extra papers for another painting. Instead, they cleaned up as they finished, and when a group was ready, I read a picture book called Snow Family for the last ten minutes of class. (Look for a post SOON about the first grade projects that go with that book.)

My artist was unfazed, even as EVERY OTHER KID in her class was finished, washed up, and listening to the book. Her back was to me as I read, and I never saw her turn to check out what was going on. Rachel was focused on that painting. Finally, with less than two minutes remaining, I told her it was time for her to stop and wash her hands. She said a simple "ok" and went to the sink!

I asked her about her painting. It's quite different from her "corners" piece (picture below). She didn't really have a story about it. I think she was simply caught up in mixing colors and painting them in beautiful patches across her paper. My little abstract expressionist!

Funny Moments

I was trying to decide today which class is my favorite. I can't decide. I'm like the mom that says "all of you are my favorite" or "I don't have a favorite."

I was also thinking about funny moments this year. A few teachers were talking about those moments when you just crack up in class and can't stop laughing. I have a lot of fun in art class, but not so many moments of huge laughter, so much that it disturbs class.

I did have one really fun class when I totally lost my composure. 4th grade had come for class. The music classes nearby and cafeteria were a little loud. I knew I wanted to talk for a while at the beginning of class, so I decided I should close the door to block the noise. All the students were sitting, and instead of asking someone to close the door, I walked over to do it myself. As I got close to the door, I started turning towards the class and closing the door at the same time. The door opens into my room, so I was pushing it closed away from me. Turns out, not all the students were in the room. For some reason, one boy was straggling behind. I closed the door on Steven's face. My only clue was the loud clunk and the burst of laughter from my students. Since I had been addressing them as I went to close the door, they were all looking at me and saw me shut the door in his face!

Startled, I opened the door to see what had happened. I had knocked him onto his butt, and he was sitting on the floor, quite confused and startled himself! Thankfully, Steven has a sense of humor. I asked if he was okay and gave him a hand to help him get on his feet again. Meanwhile, the class was roaring with laughter. Even as I tried to start the lesson again, I started laughing more. It was just one of those moments!


The other classes that ALWAYS cause me to laugh are PreK and Kindergarten. The kids say and draw the funniest things!

For example, take this little girl named Rachel. She's in kindergarten. This picture is from the first week of painting. She told me "Miss M, I'm an artist. You know how you can tell, see how I paint the corners! I could paint all day. I could paint for a whole hour!" She was so excited to be painting!

















I also got a kick out of William's painting. At the beginning of class, I explained to the kindergarteners what they need to be ready to paint. I compared it to a place setting for a Western meal. We looked at a drawing on the board of a plate, cup, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. We mentioned how we would need different things to eat Chinese, like chopsticks. All those things make us ready to eat our food.

Next to the place setting, I drew their painting set-up. We compared the picture to what they had at their seat. I explained each item--their paper, paintbrush, water cup, paint palette, and spongebob (I don't think I've explained spongebob yet...for another post). Then it was time to paint!

As I walked around the class, I realized William was inspired by my place setting picture. Check out his painting! And if you look above him to the white board, you can see my place setting on the left and painting set-up on the right!