ROCK THOUGHTS

This year I tried a fun, new project with my 5^th graders called Rock Thoughts. I found out about the web-based story telling project that is Rock Thoughts via Mrs. Hahn’s Mini Matisse Blog. To read a detailed description of how the process works, you can visit Mrs. Hahn’s website by clicking here. She does a phenomenal job of describing each step of the process. You can also visit the official Rock Thoughts website by clicking here. The project is simplified when you work with great teachers like I do who help to make the project a school wide collaboration. For this project I teamed up with the Librarian at my school to help with the word processing component.

The project does entail a hearty amount of prep work, but the results are totally worth it! This project actually started last summer, when I ventured into a dried up tributary of the Susquehanna River with 5^th grade teacher, Mrs. Barrett. We collected over 100 rocks, looking for shapes that would be inspiring for 5th grade artists.

So....how does this project work?

Students will design and paint a rock character in art class. A special, code number will be placed on the bottom of each rock.

 Students will create the beginning of a story about your rock character.

Students will type, edit, and proofread this story in Library class. This story will be put up on the Rock Thoughts website.

Students will hide your rock somewhere out in the world! Anywhere you want. Seriously, anywhere!

A mystery person will find your rock, look up your rock’s number on the Rock Thoughts website and continue your rock’s journey through story!

Students rocks will circle the globe, achieving pure awesomeness!  

The process was a little abstract for the students on the first day, so I provided the following two examples I whipped up myself. Here's a sneak-peak from my PowerPoint.

Below are some examples of finished student rock art showcased with their writing.

Old Dan Hoover

         Old Dan Hoover is an old man who is 79 years old. He wants to stay healthy so he eats his fruits and vegetables and goes to the gym on Fridays with his other older friends to do stretches. One Friday, he met up with his buds at 12:00 p.m. to do their usual stretches. First, they did one lap around the gym. Next, they touched their toes and did jumping jacks. His friend Bill did extra everything, and looked really sweaty. Old Dan Hoover started worrying, but said nothing. Then after a few more stretches, Bill collapsed and started breathing heavily.

Littledude

         Hello, my name is Littledude. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I live in Sarasota, Florida, but I am originally from Sayre, Pennsylvania. I play football. I love to listen to rock music. I hang out with a group of hard rockers.

         I always dream about catching mice filled with catnip in an endless meadow. My favorite thing to eat is popcorn with catnip. I like to watch “Hawaii Five O”. I am very nice and outgoing.

         One day I saw the door open. I wanted to go out to the meadow, but I was scared. What do you think I should do? How do you think the door got open? 

 

Crocy the Crocodile

         “Crocy the Crocodile” was a grouchy crocodile. He lived in Florida in a zoo. He wanted to go out in the sea so could be free. One day “Crocy the Crocodile got out of his cage. He ran to the nearest river and he jumped in. Right when he was about to swim away the zoo keeper grabbed a net, started walking towards Crocy, and BOOM! Just like that, Crocy Crocodile ran. He ran so fast that he did not know where he was. He found himself in Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie. He was happy but, THEN…. 

 

“Elvis Presley”

Hi, my name is Elvis Presley. I like to listen to rock and roll music. I like to eat ice cream. My favorite kind is Panda Paws. My voice is deeper than the Grand Canyon.

I live in Las Vegas. I have always had a dream. My dream was to be a rock star. I have all ways been a ladies man. I think I’m a ladies man because of my good looks.

 

Tena T-rex

Hi I’m Tena t-rex. I’m off to the dino. race! I have to pick up my race number. “Hi Rosey” I said “can I have my number?” “Here, take number 26”said Rosey “Thanks” I said, I got to the starting line. Everybody is in lime. The announcer announces “Ready…set…go!” 15 miles in I ….     

  Hershey

I am Hershey the rock.  I live on a windowsill in a pet store.  I want to go to Myrtle Beach. My favorite song is “Drop the World” by Little Wayne. Also, my pet store is located in Florida.

         I am always upset because I want to leave the pet store. Then one day the window opened and I fell out.  Next, a squirrel picked me up and took me to her nest. I almost got eaten but luckily I fell out of her mouth just in time.  

   

The Amazing Adventure of Oinkers 

Hello, my name is Oinkers and I live in this tiny house. I asked my friend Damion if he would take me outside. Of course, he did. I went walking around and Damion said he would be right back. By the time he came back I was already down by the creek. I can remember Damion yelling me. So I slept outside like camping. When I awoke I was lost in a new world.

 

Dawn

         It was a brisk, cool morning when Dawn woke up. Dawn was a dove who was on vacation in the woods with her grandma, not far from her old nest on the H. Austin Snyder Elementary roof. Dawn’s grandma sent Dawn to the store. Then all of the sudden she heard the loudest boom she ever heard and at the same time pain shot through her as fast as a lightning bolt! To her dismay, Dawn realized hunting season had started.

   

WOLF the HUSKY.

         This is my rock named Wolf. He’s from Alaska.  He lives in Hawaii currently. He hangs out with MRS. KITTY (his girlfriend). He is always funny. He dreams of eating a 1,000 coconut flavored dog biscuits while surfing. He likes to eat coconuts at the beach. He likes the best rap music on the beach. He likes to go scuba diving. He likes to watch GOLD RUSH because he’s from Alaska...

   

Sally Sombrero

         Once upon a time there was a little rock named Sally Sombrero who lived in a hat store. She always wanted to see what it looked like outside .So one night she snuck off the rack .She saw a sombrero dancing, singing and laughing and more! She was curious and went and met her good friend Pedro. So they went to The Jumping Bean Café and saw a dance off. After they got done a girl named Juan came over and asked “Do you want to go dance against me?” Sally said, “Yes!” So they went to dance for hours and hours . Finally, the judges answered it was Sally sombrero the winner.                                                

Rock Lewis JR

Hi my name is Rock Lewis JR. I live in the Baltimore Ravens Stadium. Something bad happened to me though I was on the field and I got stuck in Ray Lewis’s cleat while he sacked Andrew Luck. If you find me please return me to Rock Lewis, or Ray Lewis (that’s who I wanted to be named after.) I forgot to tell you, if you don’t hurry I will miss my tryouts for my favorite Rock Football League team the Baltimore Rocks. Hurry or I’ll be late. Please help!!!!

Musicians In Motion - 5th Grade

In honor of Spring concert season, I wanted to find a way to support and celebrate the hard work that students are doing in their music classes at my school. I bookmarked this lesson after I spied it on the  Art with Mr. Hall blog and was reminded of it when I was recently perusing "The Music of Painting," an amazing book I happened upon at a used book store.  The book provides a fascinating overview of the links between modern art and music and got me thinking a lot about how easily these disciplines hold hands.

To demonstrate the long history of artists finding inspiration from musicians, I shared the following works with my kiddos:

Charlie Bird Parker, Jean-Michel Basquiat

Philip Glass, Chuck Close

Three Musicians, Pablo Picasso

Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol

I played a short clip of each artists music and asked the kids to relate the sounds they heard to the visual information that each portraits contained. Watching the kids listening to music was a hoot and it really worked to activate their interest. We spent an entire class observing and sketching musicians from contemporary music magazines I borrowed from the music teacher. When choosing our final composition layout I emphasized cropping, simplicity, and block coloration. We added rich color to our compositions using oil pastels.

Funky Presidential Portraits

Tomorrow morning when students enter the school they will be welcomed by a new display of Presidential Portraits greeting them. I'm hoping this will add a spark to a Monday that most school's have off for vacation. I found the lesson plan for this project in the January 2012 edition of Arts & Activities. There is a link to the article here that explains the basic material layering process that helps to achieve the end result. The art teacher responsible for this lesson is Cheryl Crumpecker is a K-3 art teacher at St. Paul's Episcopal Day School in Kansas City, Mo. She used this lesson to compare the traditional portrait style of Gilbert Stuart and pop artist, Peter Max, but I decided to just focus on Max's unique painting style, drawing on the right side of the brain, line quality, and color mixing. I used heavyweight card stock for the drawing/painting and found some acetate transparencies to use for the Sharpie line drawings. I was hesitant about following the portion of Cheryl's directions that asked the students to draw their president UPSIDE DOWN. I decided to take a risk and believe in the extraordinary abilities of my 5th graders and ended up being beyond pleasantly surprised.

On the second day of the lesson before we began painting, I showed students a brief video of a recent story the CBS Morning Show did on Peter Max and his patriotic style. I used this video. It was a good way to show students how popular and iconic  Max's work is. He has painted on a lot of important things such as jumbo jet airliners and even the White House lawn during the Reagan era. It also gives students a glimpse of how Max uses his paint, painting quickly, mixing a bunch of bright colors on one brush (usually an art room no no!), and painting a background of block colors.

I took a lot of pictures because I was so excited about the results so I will inserting them all as a slideshow.

Daruma Dolls

Before I landed my fabulous new job as an art teacher of some of the most amazing human beings in Pennsylvania, I was working as the Arts & Education Director with Young Audiences of Western New York. I learned about Daruma dolls from one of the extraordinary teaching artists I worked with at this job, Jen Russo. Jen was making Daruma sculptures with at an after-school program for one of the residency programs I coordinated. I had never heard of a Daruma Doll before and as soon as Jen explained the concept behind the doll to me I was instantly intrigued and inspired. In addition to Jen's guidance, I found a few other super online resources to learn more about Darumas such as this informative Daruma PDF put out by the Allen Memorial Art Museum with Oberlin University.

In short, a Daruma is a Japanese sphere-shaped papier mache doll with a red painted body and a white face without pupils!  Daruma dolls represent Bodhidharma, a Zen monk who meditated for almost 9 years while sitting in a meditative posture for so long that his legs were of no use anymore. We compared and contrasted the way we celebrate the New Year with the Japanese tradition of the Daruma doll. The students drew some very interesting parallels!

Throughout the year, but traditionally on New Year's Day, one makes a wish or sets a goal and paints one black pupil onto the Daruma doll. When the goal is reached or the wish comes true one then paints on the second pupil and dispose the doll on the following New Year's Day.

The project began with a full day of Plaster of Paris which the students loved working with. Luckily, the art teacher who was at my school before me bought several boxes of the Plaster of Paris rolls. I prepped for this sculptural building day by cutting the plaster into 2" x 4' inch strips and by blowing up nearly 100 balloons! (My boyfriend Matt was there to help for this, thank goodness!) We used a piece of 9' x 6' manilla paper folded into a bracelet-like ring at the Daruma's base. The students taped this ring to the bottom of the balloon. I also cut tiny triangle pieces of card stock that the students taped onto the balloon for the nose.

On the second day, we started talking about some of the symbols that are typically painted onto the Daruma's face and body. I provided students with variety of colors for the paints. I did not make them stick to the traditional red color as I thought it would be cool for the students to be expressive with color rather than formulaic. I showed the students how to mix a flesh tone to match the traditional Daruma.

 

 



I got out the smallest paint brushes I had for the detailed thin lines on the Daruma face and the students practiced using a light, delicate brush stroke to achieve different kinds of line quality. I printed out several copies of Japanese word symbols so students could pick words that relate to their New Year's goal to use in their Daruma decoration.

When the students were finished painting their Daruma's exterior, they were allowed to use a Sharpee to write their goal for 2012 on the bottom of their Daruma and paint one of the eyes in. I really wanted to peek and see what their goals were, but I promised them that I wouldn't look because their goal may be personal.

The hallway display of the 5th grade Daruma's has created quite a stir with students and other teachers. Many passers by are curious why the Darumas only have one eye. The display is located just outside the art room and I have heard more than one 5th grader proudly explaining the Japanese tradition to students in other grade levels. I was happy to hear this!