Amazingly detailed bird sketches (3rd Grade/HSU)

This 3rd grade class made the most amazing birdhouse for the Murch garden out of popsicles sticks. To decorate the birdhouse we made detailed sketches of birds that will afterwords be decoupaged on the house. I connected adding 'details' to our drawings as similar to adding 'details' to our stories. I told a story with very little detail and then the same story with many more details, then asked the kids which story they preferred. Kids loved the more detailed story. I then told them that the 'viewer' too prefers more details, for the eyes have more to see. On that note, I gave them wonderful calendar images (donated by Murch parents) from which to sketch from. I LOVE how amazingly different these sketches are!!

Creative family opportunities

Artist Julie Balzer from Balzer Designs, recently posted a video about art journaling (see below) on her website. On nights when we can't do messy art, I find art journaling with my 2 kids much more manageable and still very enjoyable. The key is to get every child a spiral bind art journal of their own so you can all work side by side and to have all your materials at your fingertips. You too will need an art journal of course. We do everything from cutting and gluing, doodling, drawing, coloring with crayons and markers, use stickers, stamps, punchers.....the sky's the limit.

So, I encourage Murch families to try family art journaling. I assure the grown ups will even love it. Enjoy!!

Art Journaling Fast Forward from Julie Balzer on Vimeo.

Note: for kids younger than 1st grade, I might just try giving them a paper to work on instead of a journal for they will not want to 'work' on a page for long.

Storytelling Class Update

For the afternoon storytelling class (Fridays for 20 K and 1st graders) we have been creating props for the story Three Little Pigs. Children practiced various emotions that each character felt at different parts of the story while sitting in a circle. Some kids made teeth for the wolf using rolled tape, some kids rolled paper for the 'hair' and glued them on. This coming Friday kids will take turns playing each part and being the audience.

Note: I will also be ordering some finger puppets and table puppet theaters for future classes.

Whole-School Auction Project Picture

Finally.....here is the image of the whole-school auction project Regina Holliday and I worked on for this year. My contribution was making sure every single child in the school added a 'twig' to the 3d tree you see on the left. In my own work I create trees and roots using molded paper on canvas, so this was such an amazing experience for me to share my own personal style with each child. Regina's contribution to this piece was working with the children to make the amazing moths you see and the very dramatic night painting. I just love that moon......

Storytelling using drawings

Children in prek have been learning about using drawing to tell stories. I demonstrated a story through pictures on my Elmo projector, the kids then chose a familiar story to illustrate to illustrate. Each work was just as rich and full of detail as the one you see below. Can you guess who is the troll in this image?

Tessellations Introduction (5th)

5th graders have been creating tessellations in art after looking at M.C. Escher's work. Below are some samples. We will explore more complicated designs using other geometric shapes after this week.

below is a video, so you and your entire family could play around with tessellations at home....

(warning, there is a very annoying ad right before this video.....ignore)

3D trees

As part of a unit on trees that will extend to learning about trees in the Murch property, 3rd graders here are making 3d trees. In the coming weeks they will paint their tree, each choose a Murch tree and create leaf prints for their trees. These trees will also be used as part of the set for the Murch play Little Red Riding Hood (3-5). Please see the Murch site for audition times and dates next week.

Kindergarten Castle Prints (Welsh)

Children in Kindergarten are creating castles. We began by creating castles using paper and combining simple shapes to create castles. We spoke about what are some castle characteristics and listed each item visually. Children then drew their castle on scratch foam to create their stamp or 'printing plate'. From their stamps they created various 'prints'. One sample of the prints from each child is below.....

Cherry Blossom Festival's Youth Art Constest (Prek-5th)

These are the entries for this year's Cherry Blossom Festival’s Youth Poster Art Contest. Olivia R., Emily Y., Knoll A., Cal W., Sam W., Luke C., Daphne A., Aya S., Anna W., Marlow V-M.

I would have loved to send more but was capped off at 10 entries.

From Wikipedia:

Japan gave 3,020 cherry blossom trees as a gift to the United States in 1912 to celebrate the nations' then-growing friendship, replacing an earlier gift of 2000 trees which had to be destroyed due to disease in 1910. These trees were planted in Sakura Park in Manhattan and famously line the shore of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. (see West Potomac Park). The gift was renewed with another 3,800 trees in 1965.^[26][27] The cherry blossom trees continue to be a popular tourist attraction (and the subject of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival) when they reach full bloom in early spring. Also, Balboa Park of San Diego has 2,000 cherry blossom trees that blossom in mid to late March. InLos Angeles, over 2,000 trees are located at Lake Balboa in Van Nuys. These trees were donated by an anonymous Japanese benefactor and were planted in 1992. They originated from a single parent tree and were developed to grow in warm climates.^[28] Philadelphia is also home to over 2000 flowering Japanese cherry trees, half of which were a gift from the Japanese government in 1926 in honor of the 150th anniversary of American independence, with the other half planted by the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia between 1998 and 2007. Philadelphia's cherry blossoms are located within Fairmount Park, and the annual Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphiacelebrates the blooming trees. The University of Washington in Seattle also has cherry blossoms in its Quad.

Cherry blossoms in Newark, New Jersey

Other US cities have an annual Cherry Blossom Festival (or Sakura Matsuri), including the International Cherry Blossom Festival in Macon, Georgia, which features over 300,000 cherry trees. Belleville, Bloomfield, and Newark, New Jersey celebrate the annual Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival in April, which attracts thousands of visitors from the local area, Japan, and India. As of April 2009, Branch Brook Park has a cherry tree collection with over 4,000 cherry blossoms in more than fourteen different varieties.^[29] Branch Brook Park will soon have more flowering cherry trees than Washington, D.C., thanks to an ongoing replanting program. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City also has a large, well-attended festival.^[30] Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is the site of the peace conference that produced the Treaty of Portsmouth, for which the original Washington, DC cherry trees were given in thanks. Several cherry trees planted on the bank of the tidal pond next to Portsmouth City Hall were the gift of Portsmouth's Japanese sister city of Nichinan—the hometown of Marquis Komura Jutarō, Japan's representative at the conference.^[31]