Monday, September 21, 2009

cave art website scavenger hunt

Cave Art Website Scavenger Hunt
(work on your own or with one other person)
Name(s):


Go to this website:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

1. What country is the Lascaux site in?


Use the website and the directions I provide to answer the questions below:
Click on the discover link (has the horse painting next to it)
Click on the 'Time and Space" link
Go to the second page


2. Sketch what the entrance of the cave looked like at the end of the Paleolithic period.


Go to the next page. Look at the time line.

3.
About what year were the paintings in the Lascaux caves done?

On the sidebar on the left click on "1940 the Discovery" link

4.
How many teenagers discovered the Lascaux cave? Name one.


Next Page

The boys went though a hole in the ground from where the roots of a pine tree had lived. When they entered the cave the the found an open space that is now called:

5. Great Hall _____ _____
________

Next Page

6. List three of the animals that are painted in the Hall of the Bulls.
*
*
*

Next page.

One of the four boys,
Marcel Radiate went down a deep shaft (hole) in the cave

7. How deep was the shaft he went into?

Next page.

The next morning the villagers went to see the caves and a group of archaeologists came to explore the caves.

Go to the sidebar on the left. Click on "1963 The Closing of the Cave"

For many years people were able to go into the caves to see the paintings.

8. In 1955 about how many people a day went though the caves?

However, scientist discovered that all the carbon dioxide from visitors breathing was ruining the paintings.

Next Page

9. The caves were closed to visitors on April ____ 1963.

Next Page, Next page

In 1980 the French government started to build a life size copy of the Lascaux caves. Today you can visit the replica caves that are near the real caves.


Go to the left sidebar. Click on "Virtual Visit" There are 7 galleries you can click on to visit. The links are in yellow. Click on the Great Hall of the Bulls link.

10. Find the "unicorn" sketch it.




11. Find the hidden bear. You can only see part of the bear because it is hidden in the ______________'s belly.

Go back to the "Virtual Visit" main page. Click on the Painted Gallery link.

12. How many antlers are on the stag?


13. Find the Chinese Horses. How many are there?


14.
Choose one animal from this Gallery to sketch.


Take the remaining time to look though the other 5 galleries to gather ideas for your own art. Look at the animals that were painted, the colors that were used and the drawing style. Be prepared because starting tomorrow you will be a cave artist.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Monday Masterpiece

Ah the return of the Monday Masterpiece for the 6-8th graders. I did this at my last two middle schools and it is time to do it again. This time I am not providing the answer for the kids to circle after the first week. They have to come up with them on their own. I wish I could find the worksheet I made for this warm up. It seems to be long gone in the move from school to school.

Monday Masterpeice
Name
Period

What do you think this artwork is called?
What objects do you see in this artwork?
What colors do you see in this artwork?
What shapes do you see in this artwork?
Who do you think made this artwork (time/place/people)?
Do you like this artwork? WHY or why not?
On the back of this paper do a quick sketch of this artwork.

That is mostly it.

So Monday I will have the kids make their warm-up book. They need the Monday masterpiece sheet folded in half and two other sheets of paper.

Explain what the Monday Masterpiece is and say we are going to do it together today. The less we focus the less time we have to work on finishing our accordion books that I will be collecting at the end of class.

Starting tomorrow we will be working on our cave art unit full time. We will spend a day in the comp lab exploring the french cave paintings through a museum website, we will talk about the who, what, when, where and why's of cave art and we will be try our hand at making cave art style art.

I need to make a web guide for the Lascaux website and reserve the comp lab.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

glorified babysitter

The new schedule has been made and my roll has been clarified in my mind. A very overqualified glorified babysitter.

Why do I feel this way, because they have re-arranged the schedule so that I only see the students for 30min for a time AND during that time I have to walk them to their next elective, take them potty and pick up the next group and walk them back. We do not have a small school. It often takes 10min to walk the kids from music to art. So honestly I will have the kids in the room for about 15-20min. 5 to get set up, usually 5-10 for clean up...wait that leaves 0-10min to work on our art. Does anyone else see an issue with this?

The librarian is also at a loss. The gym and music teacher could care less (both have told me so). They have WAY less clean up and are more than happy to either play a game for 15-20min or practice their two songs.

I don't want to complain in school too much because I clearly told the principal and my rep on the scheduling committee what I really needed to have a successful art program and they made a clear choice that did not take that into consideration. Instead the principal came back with the clear purpose of giving the homeroom teachers 2 90min Profession development periods a week where they can work on writing samples with each other.(?)

I several issues with this.
  • 1st this is a really long time for the students to NOT be receiving in-class instruction each day. That's almost all of the afternoon instruction. Yah for time for teachers to professionally develop but is that best practice for students to get daily practice and sustained time to work on subjects. Our students also need a stable schedule and this is not one of them. I predict an increase of students being absent on the days when they are "not doing school" in the afternoons.
  • 2nd. Who is going to oversee that the teachers are going to be using that time to do professional development and not prep and relax time. No one to be honest.
Fine. Whatever. Sure I get NO breaks during the day except a 25 min lunch but whatever right!
  • 3rd, the real reason I am annoyed is that we were asked what the point/purpose of the electives program was. The music teacher and I meet with the principal. We talked about improving our students skills, creating a program that builds our students skills from year to year, having students learn to focus, make intentional work, learn the mechanics of the skill, revise and improve their work. NONE of this fits into 15 min art making sections.
With that time period I might as well just choose a art material per week and let the kids do whatever they want as long as they are using the correct material. It is so important for students to have time to focus on their art and doing it right. Not only that but having sustained time to really focus and get individual attention is important. Frankly there is NO point in having an art program in this format. This is a babysitting/time killing/make and take set up. Not an art education format.

This brings us to the meat of the issue. I already get a strong feeling that the new principal doesn't intend on keeping art around next year. Maybe as a very part time position with the middle school but not as a full time thing. With this new schedule, and using us to make sure that the kids are watched while the teachers get sustained "planing and development" time just reaffirms this concern that I will not be kept around.

I'm tired of bouncing around from district to district. Principal to principal, schedule to schedule. I have the ability to be a really good art teacher that provides a excellent, well rounded art program. So really the principal and leadership team needs to decided if they want an art teacher and an art program or if they just want a place for the kids to go. I am not going to keep doing something that is really emotionally and physically challenging if I don't feel that is what is wanted by the school community.

At the end of this year, before I pay to renew my licence I need to decided do I stay put if the position if offered again next year, do I try to find a middle school job (there were NO jobs open this year) or do I stop teacher for now till a better fit opens up and do something else instead.

Is it better to be a very high paid babysitter that doesn't really like what I'm doing but I'm earning a lot of money? Or is it better to earn less and try to find something I like better.

It doesn't help that my pay is freezed and I not going to get a raise for a couple years under the current budget situation.

I'll report on the new schedule when it is in effect.

Monday, September 14, 2009

first round of kinders

wow things went really well with the kinders. It is amazing what a diffrence having students at the start of their day vs. the end of their day makes. The kinder lesson plan I listed yesterday lasted just the right amount of time with the modification of no singing, "if you have red and you know it," instead we went to our tables and got to free draw for about five min. The 4th grade last class of the day was the most wild, suprise suprise, huge class, some roudy kids to start with. I did give them a gold star because 97% of the kids were on top of their game. It was just the three that had issues last year also. Tomarrow morning I see the last two classes that have not come yet. A 1st grade and a 3rd grade.
1st.
come in sit on carpet
reviwe good listening
reviwe four expectations
go on the art room walk
learn about our art choice buckets and how to earn gold stars
free draw
clean up

3rd same but sit at tables.

3rd and 5th period will warm up with more ish drawings, a demo of blending oil pastles and then work time for their books. Their books ar not as amazing as I would hope but I am not interfearing becuase I want to see what level each student is at. I can see a huge jump in skill level between the students I only had once a week last year and the ones that I had every day. Really there needs to be a 6th grade and 7th grade first time in art class and a 7th and 8th grade I've been to art before class.

Afternoon will be 3rd and 5th grade.

3rd grade: bird and bird house project. Start with the bird so it can dry. Draw bird. choose paint color and paint bird. set to dry. if time start drawing house.

5th. read ish, talk about not getting so cuaght up on being perfect and realistic. Talk about a artist who was good a creating exciting art that was not nesecarly realist or perfect looking. His name was Joan Miro.... start stick figure Miro project. Draw in pencial first and go over lines thick in dark color oil pastle.

must go find miro examples

Sunday, September 13, 2009

monday, monday

time for week two and the first classes for the kinders. They are so cute and get so lost so easily! Oh my they are overwhelmed. I start Monday with back to back kindergarten classes. I'm not sure if we will get to drawing even. I will start class by having the kids come in and sit on the carpet. We will go over the five steps to good listening. We will talk about being kind, safe and responsible in art class. We will meet arty the art bear who will read us the book, "In a painting." We will then reviwe our shapes and colors. I will hold up a shape and ask everyone to tell me what is its. Then I will hold up a color and ask everyone what it is. We will do this in both spanish and english for duel language. Now for the hard part. I will hand the kids a colored slip of paper and ask them to go find the table with that color and sit at it. We will end class by singing if you are happy and you know it but instead sing..."if you are at red and you know it please line up, if you are at red and you know it please line up, if you are red and you know it and you really want to show it...if you are red and you know it please stand up." We will repeat for all six groups and get them into line. I fully expect this to take the full 35min. If we run low on time we will not go to the tables. We will just get our colors and line up while on the carpet.

then it is time for the two 6-8th grade classes.
  • 3rd period will start by doing a sorting/matching game where they put the rules with the expectations.
  • 5th period will CHAMP out work time expectations.
  • Then both classes will quickly make warm up books with the first page as three ish drawings for the day. Tree ish, house ish and apple ish.
  • We will ish draw on monday, tuesday and thrusday. wednesday will be watercoloring of a ish drawing and friday will be first firday draw.
  • then it is work on time on our books with a reminder of the four types of materials I want to see used. They will all be layed out ont he back counter.
  • pleantly of time for clean up
  • start structured! then loosen up
PS: i need to re-arange the seating in 5th period. randy up to orange, george up to green, move someone back from each table. leave chirs at back table and melini with evelin.

after lunch and first two classes of the next day are their first time in the art room this year so I will just do the spiel.

tuesday 3rd and 5th period are planed out already

tuesday 6th and 7th period will start their show me projects. 2nd the dot-show me, 3rd bird and bird house show me, fourth hot air ballon color whell diffrent materials show me, fith ish-miro "self" poriturate and painting.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

1st day of school

Yheea the first day of school and no issues. I ended up teaching right away unlike last year. They cancelled our ride on tri-met (POOOP) and we pushed the kids though the backpack assembly. When I introduced myself at the school wide assembly the kids were really excited that I got married so that was super cute and nice. I then went back to my room and got ready for 3rd period. This was a really small class. Only 19 kids showed up and really one of them was not supposed to be there she was just confused. We went over the art facts basics sheet, the four school expectations, the triangle of respect, trust and privllages, we CHAMPed out comming into class and direction time. That was tedious but is now done. We also made our first warm up book and made our portfolio folders. We still need to decorate our names for our folders. When we did todays warm-up (make a drawing that inclues this circle) all I got was a ton of sun's. wahoo. not very creative. not super impressed. 5th period came up with a few more ideas. Third and fifth grade came up with even more ideas. This will be a slow process. I found a big chart with the letters of the alphabet and I'm going to read Ish and make the kids do alphabet ish drawings to try to get over this perfectionist issue. I guess that could be my warm up for basicly a month, but that is almost too long. I think I want them to do it faster then that.

So tommarow we are going to we are going to:
warm-up: brainstorm an example of what each expectation would look like in the art room. As a table fill out the chart to have at least three examples, share examples with class.
Champ-work time
Activity-work on name plate for portfolio
Pre-view-show according accostic naem pome book. If time start brainstorming theme and words for each letter of the name.

Thrusday:
warm-up: wednesday watercolor. day late
champ: clean up
Instruction: requirement for accordion book
Activity-fold/make accordion book. Start lettering and decorating
Exit: ?

As for the remaining 2nd-5th graders I will do the same thing I did today.

1st grade.
come in sit on carpet
welcome
how to say my name
reviwe five steps to good listening
reviwe 4 expectations for lent, get an example of each from kids. Read the dot. if time go make a drawing with the circle warm up.

Monday, September 7, 2009

back to school jitters

I wonder how kids would feel if they knew that their teachers are just, if not more, nervous about the first day of school than the kids are. I must say I am way less panicked then last year. Just a low grade tummy ache. That is the pay off of staying at the same school for more than a year I guess. the hardest part for me is that I didn't get everything done and ready that I wanted to do before the start of school.
I did not get these things done:
The star chart reward system.
*make a holder for all the classes and kids names on cards
* get a list from each teacher to make cards for each kid
*Make a chart explaining the 6 steps to getting a star
*labeling the star chart
*Laminating all the center station choices
*Laminating all the teacher names
*Laminating the last two champs posters
*Make samples for the first project for 6th-8th
I'm sure a million other things I haven't thought of yet

At the top of the list I will need to laminate the teacher names and champs posters before school. Somehow I got stuck standing outside the school with a SUPER thick stack of papers listing what class all the kids are in. If I understood correctly they just finished the class lists on Thursday afternoon, the office was closed on Friday and today so that means NO kids know what class they are in. If this is true then four or five of us have to look up and direct over 530 students to find the correct class. That is the stupidest, most disorganized thing I have ever heard of. I suggested that we post the last lists in the window of each classroom and then on the front doors of the school. Apparently this is a safety liability. Great. I will be very interested to see how this works.

I did go back to the school on Thursday till 9:15pm after my dental cleaning and I got a lot of work done. I got a bunch of posters and deco up. I made several champs signs and made all my PBS rules into laminated papers for a matching game. We are going to CHAMP our four main aspects of art before we do the in-depth PBS rules. I want to Champ by having a very heavily guided class discussion. I hope I have champs memorized by now.
Conversation
Help
Actvity
Movement and
Participation

Conversation: Can students talk to each other during
this activity/transition?

Help: How can students ask questions during this
activity/transition? How do they get your attention?

Activity: What is the task/objective of this
activity/transition? What is the expected end
product?

Movement: Can students move about during this
activity/transition? Can they sharpen their pencil?

Participation: What does appropriate student work
behavior for this activity/transition look/sound like?

The problem with CHAMPs is that it Can get long and tedieus. I broke our class into
*starting class
*instruction time
*studio/work time
*clean up/end of class

I want this to be pretty short and simple. With the older grades we will get into the more explicit PBS rules.

Basicly I hate the first day of the school year because we have to do all this behavior stuff. And I admit I poop out on it and then my classroom can get hard to manage. I hope if I start out heavyer on the exepectations that the kids will behavie better this year.

Each class will look like this.
Line up outside the room.
"Welcome to art. Just like last year I am going to tell you what table color to go to. Please go into the room and directly to the table. The tables are marked with colored tape."
(kids go into the room, have a seat and have a min to get settled)
Shake tamborine and start with may I have your attention please. countdown from 5. Praise is quiet by 0.
"Wellcome to art. I hope you all had a fun and exciting summer. Something exciting that happend to me this summer is I got married. I changed my last name so I am now Mrs. Bauer. It is spelled Bauer but sounds like Bow-er, as in take a bow. Another new thing this year is our new classroom and our new tables. We are going to work together to take good care of our new room. We have lots of other really nice stuff in this room and we will talk about them more today and over the next few weeks. Right now we are going to start class with a drawing warm up called a brain stromer. This year everytime you come to art you will find a warm up waiting for you on the table. You have the first 3-5min of class to do the warm up. Each activity will help warm up your art brain and help you brainstorm ideas for your art. Todays brainstormer has a circle drawn in the middle and asks you to make a drawing that includes the circle. the drawing can be of something or it can be shapes, desgins and colors. I am not going to show an example because I want to see what you each come up with. I am going to pass out cups with pencials, erasers and pcencial sharpners and crayons for you to use. When five minuets have passed I will ring the tamborine again. This is just a warm up a quick, fun drawing. Don't get stuck on the details.
5min to work
Tamborine
Ok good work everyone. Before we leave we will put up our drawings so we can see all the ideas everyone had. Right now please put all the crayons away and put your drawings in the middle of the table.
Because this is the start of a new school year we need to reviwe are art room rules and expecations. The first part I bet you all know. I want you to think about what our four school expecations are. I put the first letter of each one on the board to help you. Raise your hand if you know one of them.
Get the four answers
Respectfull
Responsible
Safe
Kind

with those four expectations in mind we are going to make four champ charts. This is something Mr. Mcleron and I are both doing this year. together we are going to decided how we should work together during class.
First we are going to talk about expectations for starting class. When we make a Champs chart we talk about five things.
Converstation
Help
Activity
Movement and
Participation.

Because we have a lot of us making descions together we are going to give our oppion with thumps up, middle for so so or down. Then if we need to talk more about something we raise our hands and be called on. This can go really fast if we pay attention and work together. So we are going to start with comming into the room and getting started with our brainstormer. So thumbs up, middle or down is it ok to talk when we come into the room and do our warm up.
Yes. How loud should we be talking?
quietly
How do I get Mrs. Bauer's attention if I need help. Raise your hand or wait quietly at the door till everyone has been seated then talk to Mrs. Bauer.
What should I do when I first come in to class and durin brainstormer time. come in, go right to my table and start my brainstromer. Work on my brainstormer for five min.
Can I be moving around/out of my seat during this time. No right to my seat and then working on the brainstormer.
How do I participate ? be working on my warm up.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Australia Art ideas

great link to a all about Australia art worksheet
no here is a unit I have done many times before so I already have a bevy of projects.
1. "bark" paintings of Australian animal dot or x-ray style
2. dot painting with special symbols
3. x-ray prints or scratchcards of animals

New ideas:
1. dot painting ATC do three of the same symbol or 3 different. Be ready to trade two away!
2. boomerang with dot painting on it
3. clay tile and then draw a animal in the middle x-ray style and then dots around it with a pencil eraser
4. koru art
The koru is the Māori name given to the new unfurling fern frond and symbolizes new life, growth, strength and peace. It is an integral symbol in Māori carving and tattoos.

the art works
use french curves, colleagued painted paper on the background and cut out black krou shapes on the top
younger kids all started with same basic design and added radiating outlines. choose two colors aside from white. in this example the "black" lines are drawn with chalk and then the color is done in oil pastel. then the chalk is brushed off and black ink is washed over it to color the lines black. done by kids in New Zealand
I think we will draw our design, paint it or oil pastel it in and then paint over the lines with black paint on a medium size brush.

from art projects for kids. I like this snake for the 2nd-3rd great for the x-ray style and pattern. will make s shaped template and then have each kid make their head and tail. will be done on black paper with colored pencils and maybe crayons.

TONS of samples of 4th grade and 8th grade examples of aboriginal art with a combo of dot and x-ray style. Done on black paper and I believe tempera paint.
younger kids. I like the idea of using fish, turtle and snake
our word for this unit will be Pattern and for big kids implied texture
hum...cave art should be color, tints and shade, neutral colors, monochromatic
India for sure will be shape...organic and geometric
whoo baby. superior example of 8th grade/early high school

this is a fun dot painting idea for the youngest ones. Dot painting on Emu eggs (large rocks)
These eggs (known as Rainbow Serpent eggs) were in evidence during most of the ritual ceremonies, of most groups throughout Australia. At times they were carefully stored in a secret place. They were accepted as being the eggs of the great Rainbow serpent, which had, in the Dreaming, assisted in the creation of all areas of Australia.
day one look at samples, choose a rock and paint it black with acrylic. day two paint thick lines or shapes let dry a few min then add white dots.

would't it be something to have the middle school students blow and paint their own egg. chicken egg of course. I'm sure this would never fly because of salmonella and such. I guess I could blow the eggs for them...but that would take forever.





lets not forget the hand prints that help the aborigines sign their work there is the kind of cheesy but ok for 2-3rd kids project

then a nice link to some photos of the real deal from the rocks and caves of Australia

Greek prints

For the middle school can we do printmaking of coloums for vases. For the 6th graders/did not do printmaking unit last spring they will need to scratch their designs into the scratch foam first before they can do a one color lino. For the ones who carved last spring lets try to do a 2 color lino cut. Reduction style. I love these examples from arts and activities.

of course we will also do mosaics either with torn construction paper or fun foam. I would love to do real mosaic with broken dishes and glass and such and gout but I can't imagine how we would afford that.