Puppet Love

"It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate  objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical  life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys." -- Patti Smith

Students have been working on constructing puppets from pieces of cardboard. K-2 students have been making puppets of "someone who cares about me" and "someone I admire." Constructing the puppets helps students understand how the figure can be represented by putting together basic shapes (this will help them draw and paint figures). Clothing and adorning the puppets using pieces of fabric scraps, ribbon, beads, parts of found jewelry, etc. requires students to make many individual creative decisions as they carefully select what materials will match their idea as well as having new ideas inspired by materials they are attracted to. This entire project shows students they can make art entirely by re-purposing discarded materials. 

2nd graders have been working on puppets of people they admire. Here are some finished examples from class 2-236. We discussed what it means to admire someone and read My Abuelita by Yuyi Morales and talked about how and why the boy in the story admires his grandmother.

above: From class 2-236: Olivia's grandma and Mercedes' grandma

above: From class 2-236: Kayden's grandpa, Isaac's grandma, and Brooklynne's dad.

Kindergarteners and 1st graders have been making puppets of someone who cares about them. Here are some finished puppets by K-108 and K/1-116. Students shared about someone who cares about them and what that person does that makes them feel cared about. We read Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats and discussed how the characters show that they care about each other.

above: puppets by K-108 students.

above: puppets by K-108 students.

above: K-108 puppets. 

above: K/1-116 puppets.

Pre K Texture Boards and Fall Leaf Collages

Pre K students learned about texture and created texture boards, selecting and gluing down pieces of fabric of various textures. Many students decided as or after they made their texture board that it was a representation of a race car, train or person.

above: Texture boards by PK-136

above: Texture boards by PK-132

Today, PreK students began creating Fall Leaf collages. We read Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert and discussed the season we are now enjoying and one way that we can tell it's Fall: Fall leaves on the ground which have fallen from trees. The students selected, arranged and glued the leaves all by themselves onto construction paper in the color of their choice. I think the different arrangements they made are beautiful souvenirs of Fall 2015.

above: Fall leaf collages by PK-132.

PS 307 artists' work from this past week

above: Nevaeh's stunning street scene collage 

above: So this was from last week but I just had to share Nevaeh's brilliant painting of The White House she painted from memory from her visit to Washington D.C. I wish the The White House was colorful like this. 

Bulletin Board of PreK collages

above: 2-226's monster face collages hanging from the ceiling

Robot collages by 4-236

"Shape Factory" collages by K/1-116. They cut as many shapes as they could all by themselves. They learned how to cut shapes they didn't think they could. They improved their fine motor skills, built their confidence and developed their artistic skills. 

How Does Visual Art Relate to STEM?

RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) has developed a program called “STEM to STEAM”, contending that art is an essential part of the STEM equation. Their website: / http://stemtosteam.org/highlights many of the ways in which art and design are an essential component to STEM.

Central to STEM is innovation. Innovation is central to art. In art class, students learn to innovate, to create things that haven’t been created or thought of before, to test out ideas, to experiment with materials and ideas.

Here are just a handful of ways that visual art education relates to STEM:

• In art class, students learn to plan out an original work of art or design. This skill is essential to Engineering and to innovating new Technology. You can not build anything truly great (e.g. a machine, a building, a park, a website) without art and design. You need to design things before you build them and you need an understanding of the principles of art and aesthetics to build anything in which form and function meet. Let’s face it, people want beauty in their lives. It’s part of why Apple products are so popular.

• In art class, students learn about the chemistry of paint and the science of color.

• Ratio/proportion in color mixing utilizes and strengthens mathematical thinking.

• Exploring and thinking about texture strengthens students’ sensitivity to the world around us, both natural and engineered.

• Especially in collage, students explore different shapes and how to create them. For example, as they cut a square into two triangles they are developing and sharpening their understanding of geometry. That’s just the beginning - the relationship between art and geometry is HUGE.

• Collage is especially good at developing students’ understanding of part to whole/whole to part relationships.

• Observational drawing, painting and sculpture: observing the natural world develops students’ understanding of science.

• Drawing is a huge part of engineering, science and geometry (and other kinds of math). Art education introduces students to many types of drawing; there are MANY different kinds and purposes of drawing and many are directly related to STEM. Drawing things out helps students understand math and science and is needed to plan out structures to build.

Monster faces and other collage explorations

above: "silly face" collage explorations by PK-130

above: collage explorations of "a place that's special to me" by 2-204

above: "silly faces" by PK-132

above: monster faces and a street scene (far right) by 5-346

above: monster faces by 1-222

above: monster faces and abstract collages by 4-214

above: monster faces and abstract collages by 2-230

above: Monster face collage explorations by 3-232 and 2-236

All classes contributed to the creation of hand painted paper to be used in collages throughout the year. Inspired by the illustrations of Eric Carle, which are collages created out of hand painted paper, students began to use the hand painted paper to explore the techniques and expressive possibilities of collage. The huge variety of colors and textures of the hand painted paper allows students to make matches between the visual and tactile qualities of the paper and what it is they are trying to represent. Also, the visual qualities (color, texture, etc.) of the paper remind students of other things, inspiring new ideas for their creation. 

above: collage explorations by K/1-116

Children go through phases of artistic development and these phases are necessary and should not be rushed. First is the pre-representational phase, followed by the emerging representational phase. Some children stay in the pre-representational phase until about age five while some may enter the emerging representational phase around age 3. All children are different and how early they explore a certain phase has nothing to do with their creativity or artistic ability. A full exploration of each phase ensures a richer creative development. Above we see a combination of pre-representational and emerging representational collages by students in K/1-116. Of course many of these students are in transition between the first two phases. Pre-representational art-making is primarily concerned with exploring the possibilities of materials. In emerging representational artwork we see children's motivation and attempts to represent their experiences with the world visually. 

above: examples of pre-representational collages by K-108.