The Overhead Project

We have begun a multi media class in The Living School with another parent as the teacher. The children have begun to write their own screenplays, shoot, direct and edit some of their own short films. The goal is to be ready for the Youth Silent Film Festival this June.

So, I have decided to flesh that out with a little history of photography and the moving picture.  The previous exploration of the flip book phenomenon was part of this concept. Next, we talked about the Camera Obscura, (meaning "Dark Room") whose invention can be dated back as early as the 4th century BC, with writings about it attributed to Aristotle.  It is considered the seed that grew into the film camera we know today. There above, you see a drawing of what one looked like. The idea behind this contraption is that if a bright light is shone through a tiny pinhole, the image on the outside of the box is shone upside down on the inside of the box. This instrument was  used  presumably by artists to project and copy images for paintings.

Today, we have other devices that project images on the wall to help us enlarge and copy as well as other uses. The overhead projector is a more common instrument that we use today. It uses reflection instead of a pinhole to project and image but it is like the camera obscura in that the image is upside down.

 

Keri, our patron saint at SCRAP,gave us a huge bag of clear colored plastic items she had been collecting to play with on our projectors. I wanted to get the kids thinking about shadow puppets and gave them all of this 'junk' to play with to get the creativity flowing. I also showed them some overhead projector shadow puppet plays on YouTube that were very well done. They were doing color-mixing, exploring textures, cutting out their own shapes and letters for title cards and using all of the parts of the projector for various effects. By then end of the class time we had 3 different plays being created and one wildly colorful psychedelic/disco light show, complete with soundtrack, happening on the wall.

Time Machines 2011

Since we all recently 'traveled' from the year 2010 to 2011 and since the children have been studying the concept of time we made Time Machines in art class this week.

I asked them all when they would like to travel to. Among the responses were...

 Sosaia,8, whose older sister, Elizabeth is also in the class, said he would like to go to the time before his sister was born so he could be older than her.

Shaun, 6, said "to the time when I meet boyfriends." Ezra, 5, added,"They'll be driving rocket cars by then!"

Xenia, 8, said she'd go to the future to see " a girl president!"

I based this project on one I read about it the book Beautiful Stuff!Learning with Found Materials
http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Stuff-Learning-Found-Materials/dp/0871923882
This is a Reggio Emilia inspired book that documents children bringing in found objects, organizing them and then using them in art projects. It is a huge inspiration for my class. One fundamental use for the objects is to build a sculpture and then do a drawing of it. When we are done, we return the objects for use in future projects. We  have our beautiful drawing to preserve the memory of our creation.

First, I had them take turns grabbing a few objects from the reuse materials. When everyone had 2 or 3, they could go back and gather more.

Then, they  began  to build enthusiastically. Their imaginations were running rampant about all the things their machine could do, the places it could go and the ways it would work. As an adult, I envy their wealth of ideas and energy for attacking them.  They were willing to share ideas with each other, being respectful about not stepping on toes and trying to be helpful. I encourage this kind of sharing, rather than hoarding an original thought, because working together, melding ideas, is how we can improve things. (This works on a bigger, global scale as well!)



















When they were done building they got a piece of watercolor paper and sketched it in pencil. Finally, a finishing touch of watercolor brought it to life. The machines seemed to actually work, if we all closed our eyes.

 The Future Machine

 The Silver Arrow

Snow Globes

The month of December was spent making gifts, mostly crafts, for our loved ones.  We had several projects going on so that the children could pick what it was they wanted to work on during art class. Book making, magnets, cards and coloring books for the younger siblings were among the ongoing projects.

The final week before our Winter Break we made snowglobes using found material. Old jars and discarded ornaments or salt shakers are transformed into something magical and dazzling with little effort.

What we used:
*A wide mouthed jar, one that will not tip over when turned upside down
* a figurine or other object(s) to glue to the lid, creating the inner "world"
*Silicone adhesive
* distilled or bottled water ( to keep microbes at bay)
* liquid vegetable glycerine ( I found this at the natural foods store)
* glitter or fake snow ( I have heard crushed eggshells work but I haven't tried this myself)

For several weeks beforehand, we saved cool looking,  wide mouthed, glass jars and I found a huge bag of mismatched or broken Christmas figurines at Goodwill for $1.99. I tried several kinds of adhesive, including Gorilla Glue, and found that silicone worked best and dried the fastest.

I had the children each select their object and I helped them glue it to the lid. The silicone is messy and somewhat toxic so I handled that part, while they did all the designing. They then added the glitter that they wanted, choosing from a few different colors.
Then, we added the water and 10 or so drops of the liquid glycerine to help things float and swirl nicely around in the H20.
Finally, we turned our object, glued and dried on to the lid, upside down and into the water-filled jar. Once we were satisfied with the look, the water level and amount of glitter, we sealed the lid of the jar with a bead of silicone. This keeps it from leaking. If you like, you might add a little ribbon around the base for a little extra flair.  Now, Shake it!

Flip Books

The children have been organizing services and goods to be given to our local homeless citizens. After a recent project where we made flip books, some of the kids wanted to include these fun, interactive books in their packages "because they do not have TV and this could entertain them."  This was a proud moments for all of their teachers, to say the least.

Flip books:
-Cut several pieces of card stock into the same size, preferably a rectangular shape.( maybe 2x3 or 3x5)

-Explain how animation works, that having one element of the picture change slightly in each consecutive image can make things look like they are moving. We tried to keep ours simple. If drawing a person, only move the arms. Or start with a small image that gets bigger and bigger.

-Try and keep the drawing to the right side of the cardstock.

-Once you have 10 or more pages, staple them on the left, making sure that the flipping side, the right, are all flush with each other .

-And FLIP!

SCRAP Holiday Bazaar

The entire Living School Elementary class,  15 kids aged 5-10, worked very hard for  over a month or so to get ready for the SCRAP Holiday Bazaar. The event spanned the weekend of November 20th and 21st inside the SCRAP store. There were nearly 20 vendors, all of whom sold gifts made almost entirely from reused materials. It was very inspiring to see what other things people made and the creative uses they had for materials.

 The kids all signed up for time slots to come manage the sales. Many of them had incredible sales skills, schmoozing with their public and using their people skills to encourage people to spend. But the quality of their work was really the selling point. We talked a lot about high quality and why it is important to make things well. This is one way we can save them from becoming garbage, one of our top objectives! It was great to see that the things they made at the end of our production period, with all of their practice, had advanced in quality considerably.

 One of our top sellers were our famed sea urchin ornaments. We found the shells at SCRAP. Immediately, we had the idea to turn them into jelly fish using many types of ribbon. The high quality ribbon was all salvaged or donated.

 The little pillows you see here are "Bed Bugs" that the children decorated and sewed. They are filled with grains and lavender. When placed in the microwave for a few seconds they get warm and help with aching muscles or keep you cozy on a cold night.

                           Our display comprised of donated, borrowed and re-used materials.

The garland on the front of the table was made by water coloring paper, cutting out circles and gluing to thread. Immediate, simple and cheap beautification!

                                       Beautiful hand painted gift boxes sold for only $2.00

 

These are tile coasters that we decoupaged with the children's drawings, paintings and spin art.

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During a lull, one of our 5 year olds made this pleading sign. Fortunately, when you are working with children you can get away with these blatant attempts. Coming from them, they are adorable.

While this opportunity was invaluable for the children and their life experience, I cannot sign out here without mentioning that WE TOTALLY MADE OUR GOAL for craft sales! We are beyond pleased and happily surprised by the fact that the kids sold nearly all of their crafts. Now, we have been having serious discussions about how to spend (or save) the cash.  The few items we have left have been set up on a makeshift table at school to sell to parents and friends.


If you missed this sale, SCRAP has plans for an ongoing boutique in the near future.

The Elfen Factory

We have been hard at work all month long in preparations for the SCRAP Holiday Bazaar. All of our handmade gifts needed to be made almost entirely of re-used materials. We had a long list of items to make and kept thinking of more. Finally, Michelle and I agreed to stick with: gift tags, gift boxes, magnets, frosted glass votive holders, sketchbooks, eye pillows, garlands and ornaments, including our magnificent pieces des resistances: the Urchin Ornaments ( see picture in next post).

We needed one hardcore day in the shop though, to really churn out those last items. So the class took a field trip to SCRAP to use their workshop. Within an hour we had made more than we ever did in two back at school, it seemed.

The main reason we needed to go there to work was to use the drool-inducing die cut machine. I am not sure who likes this more, the kids or the teachers. This is a wonderful invention that cuts paper and other materials into a desired shape. In our case it was gift tags with a little hole and several box shapes that we could fold into a finished product.

The paper we used for these products we decorated with "spin art"- paint in a salad spinner & watercolor and we used blueprint vellum salvaged at SCRAP. We then finished them off with fancy ribbons.

Thank you to SCRAP for letting us use your space and tools!!

Re Use Center

We finally moved into our new class space in late October. Michelle, another parent and teacher at The Living School and I spent a day setting up and organizing our grand new studio! This is very exciting considering storage of our art supplies last year was in the bathroom.

Keri Piehl, the education director at SCRAP ( http://scrapaction.org/ ) came in to help us set up our Re-Use Center. The parents and students have been saving up items for us to re-purpose into art that would otherwise wind up in the trash. Keri also brought some interesting things from SCRAP's inventory to share with us. Included in these items were milk cartons, plastic Easter eggs, red plastic netting that held fruit, odd plastic bits, plastic 2 liter bottles, upholstery strips, etc...

All of the stuff we'd collected was completely disorganized and look well, basically like a bunch of garbage. Keri led the kids in letting them decide the best way to organize it. A few people made suggestions of how we could do this: by size, material, etc...Finally, after a democratic vote they all agreed to sort it out by color.

The kids divided into groups and were in charge of certain colors. It was an organized chaos and there was a lot of mad activity as people went through boxes and piles. It was interesting to hear them discuss what an object's true color was. In some eyes an object was green, in others it was yellow.

Finally, all of our junk was starting to look really pretty. This was seeming to me like a wonderful way to organize just about anything. Color plays such an important role in aesthetics. And it was helping my brain make sense of the jumbled objects.

Once everything had a home, the children made labels to put on the boxes and bins. Some of the bins we had correlated with the objects in them. And they used matching colored pens to make the labels.

I am sure that there are many ways to sort out these objects that are destined to become art. I really had nothing to do with how it all came together as the kids were the ones how led the project. But I am quite pleased with the outcome, being the one who manages the supplies and spends time in the studio. Crayons, paints, paper and other art supplies in a store are organized by order of color and so why shouldn't these supplies? If I was a blue milk jug lid or a purple plastic Easter Egg, I'd be feeling pretty fancy about now.