#Making
Make A Chicken Project/Wk 5 Remote Learning
“Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.” – Aesop Because if you do, surely you will have underestimated. Both the quantity and quality of the Make A Chicken project assignment far exceeded my expectations for my art students in grades 5 and 6 at Miscoe Hill School, in Mendon, MA. Three key events came […]
Youth Art Month 2020 5/6 Artists
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” – Michelangelo It is my pleasure to announce the artworks and artists for this year’s Boston Youth Art Month show! The Massachusetts Art Education Association sponsored Youth […]
Cardboard Creatures – Phase Three – Design for 3D Printing
“There are 3D people stuck in a 2D world” – Katherine Douglas, Choice-Based Art Education in the Classroom (TAB), (Douglas & Jaquith, 2018) “…especially in school art classes.” – Mona Lisa Lives Here I am blessed with a son who participated fully in an entire childhood filled with art making experiences, from extra-curricular classes I offered at […]
Cardboard Creature Project – Phase Two – Stop Motion/Green Screen
“My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.” – Steven Spielberg Starting with a quote by Steven Spielberg may seem like a lofty way to begin a post about video making by upper elementary students. To […]
Cardboard Creature Project – Phase One – Build
“The most sophisticated people I know – inside they are all children.” – Jim Henson The photo above is of me and a whole bunch of cardboard on October 8, 2019 as I waited to introduce our Cardboard Creature project to an incoming class. It was all down hill from there! Here’s how we did […]
Summer Learning 8: Clay Is Fun/Clay Is Hard
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison I spent most of my summer getting dirty and looking like this: And it was glorious! I would spend the early morning hours getting stuff done around the house, writing, or […]
WeRMakers: Product ReDesign In Fifth Grade Art
“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.” – R. Buckminster Fuller This is the third fall I have facilitated the WeRMakers Product Redesign unit. This is a project-based-learning unit that utilizes resources from Project Zero Classroom’s Agency by Design. A few colleagues and I participated in their online […]
Design – 3D Modeling:
“3D Printing: It can change the whole paradigm of how our children will see innovation and manufacturing in America” – Bre Pettis, MakerBot CEO We’ve had our MakerBot Replicator II for five years now. We received it for free thanks to a grant from MakerBot and DonorsChoose. Since then, we’ve acquired two more – a […]
Sketchbooks and ZoneDoodles
“Fostering thinking requires making thinking visible. Thinking happens mostly in our heads, invisible to others and even to ourselves. Effective thinkers make their thinking visible, meaning they externalize their thoughts through speaking, writing, drawing, or some other method. They can then direct and improve those thoughts. Visible Thinking also emphasizes documenting thinking for later reflection.” […]
Summer Art Activities: Creating With Nature
Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. – Marcus Tullius Cicero And nature provides us another medium with which to create artwork, especially in summer. This post is part of a series of posts by the Art Ed Blogger’s Network and the topic today is Summer Art Activities. When I think about […]
Light-Up Artwork with Paper Circuits
“Art history is littered with work that involves light.” – James Turrell, Artist Following the lead of artist, James Turrell, in the early days of April, we worked on drawings with oil pastel to which we added LED lights, by creating Paper Circuits. We used multi-colored LED lights, copper tape, a battery and a piece […]
Making Sketchbooks
Fostering thinking requires making thinking visible. Thinking happens mostly in our heads, invisible to others and even to ourselves. Effective thinkers make their thinking visible, meaning they externalize their thoughts through speaking, writing, drawing, or some other method. They can then direct and improve those thoughts. Visible Thinking also emphasizes documenting thinking for later reflection. […]
Making Mandalas
Compasses, protractors, and rulers…oh my! Mandalas: Where art and math collide. As shared in the last post about Sketchbooks, this term we created Mandalas on the covers of our newly made sketchbooks. We used protractors, compasses, rulers, pencils, and markers. Here is a short video showing how to make them: Once the Mandalas were underway […]
