Week Four.

First Grade:
Since Firsts weren't allowed to paint today because of horrendous clean up last week, we did a five minute pastel lesson. We looked at Van Gogh's landscapes and I demo'd how to mix colors with your finger and make marks that were like the brush marks in Van Gogh's paintings. They got messy. I was trying to push them a little more today to fill in their whole page and not worry about "messing up."

Fifth Grade:
We had a student switch classes in 5th, so this was her first day doing Choice. I asked the other students to explain it to her, they did a pretty good job. Then we talked about what they did last week; "splatter paint." We watched a couple video clips of Jackson Pollock and talked about whether it was art or not. I told them that I would like us to start using the language "action painting" for this type of work and that, weather permitting, we may do a larger scale action painting next week. Then I let them get to work. There's a group of boys that get really crazy while doing the painting, and while I'm glad they're excited, they need to work on getting along. That's something their classroom teacher says is a problem for them usually, anyway, though. Next week, I think we're going to talk about the "I'm not the center of the universe." It's funny, the other fifths do not have as hard a time getting along... oh well....



Anyway- I think next week we'll be opening Collage/Paper Construction Center, so we'll have that option, so I've got to get on getting that set up. The fifths want to make some kind of hats or something that their teacher was telling me about, so Paper Construction would be a good place for that.

I also ordered clay yesterday. So that will be in the works, too....