A Twist on the Bottlecap Art

Though I intended to do a second bottlecap panel last year, I never got around to it.
This year, I'm committed to it--I am the advisor to the high school art club and will use their energy to make it happen!

     In the meantime, this happened.




I was there when it first occurred. The PE teacher took his empty bottle and that of the IT guy, walked up to the wall, and screwed them in. I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was even funnier how it shocked people.

     How have we never thought of this before?

Well, we have. When I first started the project, the head principal suggested I make a reverse mural wherein I cut off the screw threads from the top of bottles, attach them to a board, then have an reuseable bottlecap mosaic base. We could move the colors around, screwing and unscrewing bottlecaps to make different pictures. I've never figured out how to do it, but I think a small board would be a great extra time art center in my classroom.

The bottle installation has grown to five bottles. I would be more inclined to leave the bottles up except you can see the remaining liquid in this unclean trash. The bottlecaps were all washed before being used to remove dirt, sugar,and other germs. I'm afraid fresh liquid will turn the inside of those caps nasty.

For now, the bottles have brought a smile to many and freshness to the collaborative art.

That which by any other name...

Are you familiar with marshmallow?

No, I don't mean the puffy sugar treat that is excellent when paired with hot chocolate, rice krispies, or graham crackers and chocolate. Especially with graham crackers and chocolate.

I mean the color. Marshmallow.

This year, my classpack of Crayola markers got a few new friends due to an ordering mistake at the early childhood center. The 10 pack of assorted colors added some variety to our marker sets. Laser Lemon is a favorite, as is Marshmallow. At least that is what the second graders call it. No, it is not white, off-white, or cream. To me, I would call it light purple. But apparently the name is Marshmallow. They have said it so many times that yesterday, when I reached for a marker and debated which color I wanted, I vocalized to myself "Marshmallow." It was then I decided to enlighten the (blog) world about such a tint of purple. Until I looked at the barrel of the marker. Tropical Purple.

What!?! This color is called Marshmallow!
Don't the people at Crayola know that?

I still have no idea why my students insist on calling it marshmallow. While pink marshmallows are nearly as common as white (outside the US), I have never seen a purple marshmallow.

Until I began drawing with it...

Artist's Achilles Heel

Interesting thing about being an art teacher---you might not excel in every area of art. I recently described photography and handwriting as my left and right Achilles heels as an art teacher. I have, not one, but two colleagues who put me to shame in both categories. And I just got back from a trip to Mongolia with both of them...

I understand the theory of good photography. I know some of the technical stuff like f-stop and shutter speed. Had to learn that stuff for Praxis. I even co-taught photography with the tech teacher during my first student teaching. Plus I understand composition, value, texture---all those elements and principles of art. I just can't manage to make it work when I'm behind the lens of a camera! These days, I don't even own a camera. It died during my second year in China and I haven't bother to replaced it. I did buy a Nikon DSLR for the art department at the end of that year, and have been known to borrow it on occasion, but I live most of my life abroad without a camera. I was thankful to my photography-talented friends for documenting our adventures in the steppe of Mongolia.

And then it happened.

We were in a ger of a local family. My friend was sitting on the floor, learning a game similar to jacks from the wife. He passed the camera over so someone could document the game. While I had the camera, the daughter made her way to the door. I snapped this shot. And then I clicked a few more times. Just in case the first one didn't turn out.

It might be the only good photo I've ever taken. And my friends---they each have 400 amazing shots from the week---but I'm especially enamored with my sweet picture of this little girl, looking out into the world from the safety of her humble home.
_

After I referred to handwriting and photography as my left and right Achilles heels, I realized I am also embarrassed by my inability to draw from my imagination. Drawing from observation, no problem--but drawing from my head, drawing anything in a cartoon-style, no way! I guess I am a three-legged artist, or at least a three-heeled one...

Do you have an area of art where you struggle? Are you embarrassed by it? Have you found ways to work around your weakness?

I will print a poster rather than make it by hand because I prefer fonts to anything I can handwrite, or could. Just this week, I decided to view handwriting as an exercise in observational drawing---mimic the letters of favorite fonts when writing by hand.

Maybe this will be a turning point in my relationship with my handwriting.




Photo processing credits to Warren.
Not sure how much he tweaked it. I know I didn't shot in black and white, but I love it as a black and white image.

Mona Lisa and Other Management Techniques

I recently read about the Mona Lisa call/response technique and being Mona Lisa ready. How perfect! My students were already hearing me say "Mona Lisa quiet" because of the noise level display but these directions were so clear, specific, and fun!

     Looks like a new poster is in order!

I didn't send this poster to the printer. Instead, I used our on-site A3 color printers. (For those of you unfamiliar with A3, it's twice the size of A4. A4 is very similar to 8 1/2 by 11.)

While I was designing, printing, and laminating, I decided to illustrate my "first grade rules."

Last year, first grade was rather large with an especially high concentration of rowdy boys. While I usually prefer rules that are broad guidelines and general principles, I found I needed some explicit instructions.

     Stay in your seat.
     Raise your hand.
     Only talk to people at your table.

I wrote these rules on the board and reviewed them at the beginning of class each week. When students violated a rule, I directed their attention back to the board before going any further. While my normal teaching style is more relaxed, this system worked to restore some order to the chaotic class.

These students are now second graders. The class has been split and a few additions were made, but I've found some of them still need the structure of those three simple rules.

I rewrote the rules on my white board during the first week of school but now I have these spiffy signs!

Each rule is a separate full-color A3 print, laminated and displayed via magnet tape on the whiteboard. I like that the rules are individual print-outs so I can separate them to focus on a specific rule or move them to another part of the board. I can even take them down entirely for an upper level class that is permitted to get out of their seats to get supplies.

In the same vein as the Art Room Noise Levels, I found examples from art history to illustrate the instructions. I searched through my AP Art History images to find appropriate works. I like that the three images I settled on are ancient, Renaissance, and non-western. I might change the image for only talking to kids at your table. I'm not thrilled with using a 3D example. In addition, I wouldn't mind something more modern or a non-western that is less influenced by colonization. If you have suggestions, comment below! For now, I'm just excited to have moved beyond Expo markers on the whiteboard.

Graphing with Grade 4

I like things to be pretty.
                                 Well-designed.
                                            Aesthetically pleasing.

But sometimes, the function is the main thing.

Today, I made a rudimentary graph. Then I snapped a picture of it. And now I'm posting it. See, just this weekend, I read Mr. E's post about graphing favorite shapes. I've done similar things before, but with that post fresh in my mind and five extra minutes at the end of 4th grade art, I decided to do an informal poll of the students. They had just spent the period doing a continuous line drawing of their shoe followed by another (not necessarily continuous) line drawing of their shoe. Afterwards, they selected their favorite and mounted it on a piece of colored paper.

      So which was their favorite?

As much as the kids complain about the challenge of a continuous line drawing, I knew from last year that many students select that as the better of their drawings. How many today? I asked each student, just placing a dot in the rectangle to signify each response. The class was almost evenly split.

It was quick. It was ugly. I'm glad I did it. We practiced math skills while recognizing diverse opinions and reflecting on our own art.

Now I want to create a more permanent unlabeled graph for future activities. The question is where and how...