Turkey Survival 101!

  As a teacher the three day week before Thanksgiving is great, but leaves me with the question "what do I teach?".  Many students are absent due to travelling, energy levels are high, and there's an overall excitement that can sometimes distract students from being 100% focused on their artwork.  So projects pause for a week and students are given a challenge:       

        ..... you are now a turkey, it's the week of Thanksgiving.... how will you survive and not get eaten?!..                           

  This prompts students to begin to think creatively.  How will they hide, disguise or flee the USA in order to survive?!  We talk about the character of our artwork (the turkey), the setting we will choose, and the problem (survival!).  Here are the responses of some of our Pre-K 4, 1st, and 3rd grade students this year!!

Lego Castle Printmaking!

  The Early Childhood Education classes in my school use an amazing and inspirational curriculum called Tools of the Mind.  The curriculum travels through the  Magic Tree House Series with Jack and Annie throughout the Kindergarten level.  Kindergarten students are traveling to medieval times  through the land of castles and knights.  I stumbled across this project concept on pinterest, and had to try it! We began of course, with our learning targets (the goal of what students are learning and able to do by the end of this lesson): 

 I can name different parts of a castle.

I can design my own castle through printmaking.

We began with understanding the word architecture, and architect.  We then moved in to some architectural elements of a castle.  Our four vocabulary words specific to castles were.....

Tower         Drawbridge         Arch         Turrets

We practiced saying some of those tough words, figuring out and finding them on different pictures of castles, then learned what printmaking was.  Students were best able to connect it to stamping like they have done in their classroom.  Now came the fun part, explaining to the students we were using legos, but not to build, but to print/stamps!  I wish I could have captured the looks on their faces as I did a demo of how we do this responsibly.... They're minds were blown away in shock, excitement, and a little confusion(because legos are for building after all!).  Check out the photos of the process and final products below! 

As you can see we had a blast becoming architects and designing our own castles!! 

A very special Bancroft ROAR to the parents who donated some legos to this awesome project!  Without these parents responding on such short notice to a request of such a loved and cherished item, we couldn't have had this fun and great learning opportunity!!

Career Week Thank You!

Chef Visit to Kindergarten Students!

 A week or so ago, Bancroft held it's first ever College & Career Week!  

We had many guest speakers come to talk with students about their chosen career and the path they took to get their!  The school was decorated with different college posters and information in all the halls and teachers decorated their doors to tell about the university or college they attended!

A huge thank you to the pilot, doctors, musicians, fire fighters, police officers from the 4th district, chef, and K-9 officer who came out to speak to our kids about future careers!  Check out the photos of the speakers I was able to catch in between classes!

Fire Fighters taught us about fire safety through discussion and showing us their awesome gear! 

This DC MPD K-9 was an exception to the "no dogs" rule on the playground!  We learned that even he went to school and became a K-9 police dog!  We watched him run around chasing his favorite green ball toy!  Then we got to pet him!

Art, Literacy, and Emotions!

  Students in kindergarten and first grade have been learning about drawing ourselves, showing emotion, and connecting colors to emotions in their artwork! At the beginning of each class we read aloud our "targets" or "goals" for the day.  Here are our goals for this multi-class and multi-step project!

* I can draw myself using shapes.                                    

* I can draw myself showing how I feel.

                                          * I can match colors to feelings in my artwork.

   We started out by simply practicing drawing ourselves, using ovals, circles, and all sorts of shapes to represent our body.  Then we focused in on our face and how it tells the way we feel about something.  We read the story "Today I feel Silly, and Other Moods that Make my Day" by Jamie Lee Curtis.  While I read the story each student made the face of the feeling on each page paying special attention to the changes they saw on their face.....

 Afterwards we chose four different feelings to illustrate ourselves.  While students drew themselves they focused on using shapes and really capturing on paper the changes in their eyes, nose, mouth, and especially eyebrows.  Students all chose different feelings which made it a unique project because each picture is different!  

We then looked at two pieces of artwork and talked about the ways an artist can use color to help create the mood within an artwork.  We noticed through discussion, that dark colors typically match more negative feelings and light colors tend to match positive feelings.  This conversation also brought up that each person has their own thoughts and opinions about which colors go with positive feelings, and which go with negative feelings.  Finally, students used colored pencils to assign one color to each self-portrait based on it's feeling.  Check out the results!