To build upon last year's community of artists, we wanted to instill a love of creativity, expression, and innovation in our students early on in the year. To begin, we introduced a basic element of art: the line.  We noticed a strong interest in lines when our students were drawing, writing, or constructing at various centres throughout the classroom. Initially, and to get our students' "minds on" to this concept, we talked about lines we see in our world. By investigating our classroom, we discovered many lines around us; on the ceiling, on the floor, on the wall, on the shelves, and all around us! Every time a student found a line, he/she was asked to describe it. Surprisingly, our students came up with amazing vocabulary. Lines found were described as: thin, think, straight, wiggly, zigzag, broken, dotted, wavy, scribbled, crossing, horizontal, and vertical! One student in particular shouted out: "It's a hopping, happy line!" - I.D.

 

Intended as an exercise in visualization and a kinesthetic approach to line drawing, the students were then asked to close their eyes as we played classical music in the background. Once the music stopped, they were individually provided with a marker and large paper to which they were asked to draw their emotional responses to the music that they just heard. With the music back on, they recorded what they saw and felt in their minds.

At first there was a lot of giggling, but after the initial excitement it became very quiet in the classroom! All of the students became deeply engaged in the activity while listening to Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." We immediately found a temporary space to display everybody's work and we began an introductory exercise in art criticism. We asked our students to take a "sitting gallery walk" and observe the work of their peers. Next, we asked them what kinds of lines they saw and they discovered when two lines met, that they became a shape! Finally, everybody shared their work in front of the group and talked about what they liked most about their work.

This simple exercise demonstrates how important art experiences are for children. They play an important role in a child's physical, emotional, and cognitive development while also tying in perfectly to the curriculum. The students were able to express emotions, experienced autonomy and built self-confidence during this experience. In the past few weeks, our class has engaged in many more creative experiences. From printing with lines, marble-painting, working with weaving frames and elastics, popsicle sticks and more, our students have truly enjoyed creating different line designs!

Food for thought: Next time you venture into the outdoors, a supermarket, your home, or even your backyard, see what kind of lines you can find!

Thanks to my amazing DECE, Heidi Theis, for planning, implementing and documenting such a wonderful activity! Looking forward to seeing where "lines" take us!

Paintlounge: Art and Lattés

My inspiration for this post comes from Joanne Babalis who introduced me to one of York Region's newest and most unique places to explore and create art! With various canvas sizes, an acrylic paint bar, tools, aprons, and several idea books, Paintlounge offers a new concept called social painting! As stated on their website, we want you to discover how fun and relaxing painting can be, even if you haven't touched art since grade school! The atmosphere is absolutely wonderful! Music playing in the background, a cafe in the middle that offers hot and cold speciality drinks and tasty desserts, and knowledgeable staff that share ideas and techniques - what more could you ask for to feel inspired?

That being said, I couldn't resist jumping on the opportunity to call up some of my closest girlfriends and plan a Friday night painting party! With some anxiety around "what to paint," my girlfriends had no problem feeling inspired once we arrived!

For me, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to create a piece of artwork that I could bring in and share with our class! With my inspiration being clouds, I was inspired by the work of Canadian artist Maya Budan (http://blog.mandybudan.com) and in particular, her piece entitled "One Cloud." Not only does her work connect to our class' current exploration of lines in art, but her interpretation of a cloud was fascinating - I couldn't resist!

Maya describes her inspiration for this painting on her blog: "I'm exploring the way clouds interact with the sky. Sometimes the cloud seems separate from the sky and sometimes it is clearly just an extension of it." 

With this in mind, I hope my interpretation of Maya's work will provoke our students to continue to engage with our Cloud inquiry from an art perspective and beyond. For my girlfriends, I hope they continue to feel inspired and join me the next time I venture back to Paintlounge to explore my creative side again!

In the coming weeks, we hope to use my painting as a catalyst to pull together other artistic representations of clouds through a class "Cloud Book," exploring transparencies with student's quotes about their cloud, plasticine, and our own acrylic canvases to paint on! We also hope to create our very own model of a cloud to hang in our classroom! There is certainly lots to look forward to!

As for my girlfriends, it's safe to say that they all left Paintlounge on Friday night feeling invigorated, relaxed, proud, and inspired! A Friday night success! As for Monday morning, I couldn't wait to share my experience with Ms. Theis (DECE - @h_theis), Mrs. Abalos (@mel4education), my Principal Mr. Collins (@gregcollins2010) and most importantly my students. I have yet to show them my painting so I'm really looking forward to seeing their reactions and hearing their comments! Who knows? Maybe Lorna Jackson P.S. will create their very own Paintlounge for students? It's in the works...so stay tuned!

Paintlounge: www.paintlounge.ca
Follow them on twitter: http://twitter.com/paintlounge

Student Scientists: Making Rain

With quite a few rainy days towards the end of September, my DECE and I decided to jump on this as a learning opportunity to engage our students in how the clouds look different when it rains. Many of our students were able to compare the "rainy" clouds to our initial exploration on the soccer field and recall how those clouds looked different. Words like "puffy," "fluffy," "white," and "cotton candy" described the "sunny day" clouds and words like "angry," "grey," "black," and "dark" described the "rainy day" clouds...interesting! To take our learning one step further, we decided to ask our student scientists questions related to these natural occurrences. Below are their theories:

Why do we need clouds to give us rain?

"So they can rain on trees so they can grow." - J.S.

"To make flowers grow." - R.F.

"We need water to grow and an umbrella to keep us dry." - T.B.

"The birds need to drink water." - L.D.

"Animals need to drink too." - A.M.

How do clouds make rain?

"They rain when they want." - S.M.

"When clouds get dark that means it's going to rain." - L.D.

"The clouds all come together to make rain." - I.D.

"First one cloud gets the rain and then brings it to the sun and then gives it to the other cloud." - L.D.

"The clouds go over each other and they turn into a big black pad." - W.V.

"The clouds get the water from the splash-pads." - T.B.

"The clouds get the water from the ocean to make rain." - L.D.

After listening to our students fascinating propositions, we decided to introduce the water cycle with a read-aloud. "The Falling Raindrop" by Neil Johnson and Joel Chin was given to me as a gift by my mentor Tania Sterling (@taniasterling / www.taniasterling.wordpress.com) and is a wonderful book that not only illustrates and teaches the water cycle in simple terms, but it also is one that has a deeper message of creating a positive climate for learning. After reading the story, we had our students become the raindrop and use their bodies to retell what happened to him (with our prompting) throughout the story. This dramatic representation of the water cycle helped our students understand the four simple steps to creating rain and was the perfect precursor to our experiment! Coupling this kinesthetic approach with a diagram, our students were able to remember what happens when a raindrop is born and how it becomes a cloud again. 

Keeping in mind that all this learning took place over the course of the week and is still ongoing, we decided to celebrate our learning about the water cycle with an experiment! We were going to illustrate our theories about how a cloud makes rain by making rain ourselves! Our students were thrilled and fully embraced the role of becoming scientists by remembering that scientists needed "magnifying glasses to look at things, a camera to take pictures, a clipboard to write stuff down, a pencil to write our words, and a marker to draw pictures." After setting up the learning space for this experiment and creating a "Materials" list with our student scientists, we modelled how to complete the Experiment chart. Next, we took estimates as a class as to how many raindrops our cotton ball clouds could hold before they started to make rain! Estimates ranged from 10 drops to 100 and students were very eager and excited to test their theories! 

Each group had: 1 baking tray, 1 jar, 1 cotton ball, 1 eye dropper, 1-3 magnifying glasses, 1 cup of water, markers and an Experiment Chart

As a Rain Team, our students scientists worked in small groups of 3-4 to see how many raindrops their cotton ball cloud could hold before it started to rain into their jar. 

Using our "rain water" (water with blue food colouring), students took turns with the eyedropper as they dripped rain onto their cloud. Using magnifying glasses, other members of their group watched closely to see if and when a rain drop would fall. 

My DECE and I circulated amongst all the groups with a clipboard, camera, and pencil in hand documenting their conversations and discoveries! We were amazed to see how focused and collaborative our student scientists were as they worked together to complete the experiment and fill out their Experiment chart. One group shouted out "Our cloud is making rain!" and another "We see rain dripping in our jar!" - it was all very exciting!

To consolidate our learning, we had our class meet back in a community circle:

What did you see during your experiment?

"We saw raindrops and some clouds." - I.D.

"First [the cotton ball cloud] was white and then it turned blue. [The cloud] was dark blue and then we squeezed it and it became light blue." - S.M.

"We squeezed the eyedropper on the cotton ball and then the rain came!" - I.D.

"We put the water in the glass and it makes rain." - V.D.

"[The cloud] looked heavy and blue." - R.L.

"[The cloud] couldn't hold anymore water so it started to rain." - T.L.

How many drops did it take for your cloud to make rain?

"26!" "83!" "16!" were some of the groups findings! 

All in all, our experiment brought together science, peer learning and inquiry and it was huge success! Our students continue to talk about it and we look forward to venturing more into the science behind clouds and trying more experiments in the near future! Stay tuned!