The Gift of Storytelling and Puppetry

Puppets allow children to tell and retell a story and while doing it allowing them to essentially 'play' with pieces of the story. Here are pictures of the kids in 3rd grade telling the myth of Persephone. The main story remained unchanged, yet I taught the kids ways to get creative in their retelling by adding humor, and changing some basic aspects of the way the story was originally presented.

Storytelling, drama and acting allow children to experience the emotions. In retelling the story in their own way, their own words children learn about composition and how each aspect of a story is a 'moving' part that could be manipulated at the creator's will. Doing more storytelling, drama and acting allow kids to improve their own storytelling abilities for they see the huge part emotions and gestures play in the telling of the story.
Children who are normally shy amongst their peers suddenly come alive. In their mind, the puppet is speaking; not themselves. Acting and playing another person's role unleashes us from the bounds we normally place on ourselves when shy.
In order to create a play, one must first envision it in the mind. Here Zeus and Hermes float in a 'cloud' above 'frozen' Earth.
Here the characters are in the 'Underworld'
One of the 3rd grade classes is on their way to writing a modernized version of this story to tell their younger peers. We will begin this week. Keep checking for updates.

I must thank fellow blogger and now far away friend, Sally Haughey from Fairy Dust Teaching for making me believe in the power of stories and narrative for teaching. Every parent of a young child should check out this blog......Amazing work!

Totems in front of the art room

These are amazing! And to think they are essentially oatmeal containers, glue, paint and paper. Please take a minute to come by the art room and view them in person.

Values to create a 3D looking face

In third grade children have been studying values. Values are variations of dark and light on a 2D art and can be used to create a 3D look. they began the unit by looking at a simple mug and finding and drawing it's values, as well as creating a value scale using crosshatch. For this particular lesson children had to touch the various 'mountains' on their face, choose a light source and figure out which side of each face 'mountain' would be dark, light and medium values.

We also talked about the idea of contrast and how contrast is often used in art to make the lights appear lighter and the darks appear darker. The artist below created a very deep contrast.

A taste of POP art (5th Grade)

Artists in 5th Grade were introduced to the artist Lichtenstein and POP art. We discussed the process in which artists might choose a medium or a subject. We also addressed how by creating works inspired by another artist we gathered information about this process and how we can follow that process ourselves in our own work or personal interests.

Smocks, smocks, smocks

Although we have informed all families in the fall about this, I must again remind all families to make sure their child have a large paint t-shirt in their child's cubby/locker. I cannot guarantee your child's clothes staying clean without a smock. To teachers, the children need to come into art already wearing their smocks so that we can use those 45 minutes making art. If anyone out there have extra shirts, please donate them to the art room. They will be put to use on kids who do not yet have smocks.

What I do with all those egg cartons?

I must thank all the Murch parents who have been dropping off recycled 'supplies' for the art room. Here is a sample of what I do with the egg cartons. I cut them so there are 6 cups per palette. Then use black, white, red, blue, yellow and brown......

Keep them coming!!

Quilts on the stairways (2nd Grade)

Please take a minute to come see the 2 quilts hanging by the 2 front steps in the main building.