3rd Grade Ebenezer Bleezer's Ice Cream

This lesson came with the help from a fellow art teacher.  This lesson was intended for students to use their critical thinking skills by interrogating across the curriculum.  3rd graders read the poem "Bleezer's Ice Cream" by Jack Prelutsky, if you're not familiar with it, it's too good not to post.

I am Ebenezer Bleezer,

I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,

there are flavors in my freezer

you have never seen before,

twenty-eight divine creations

too delicious to resist,

why not do yourself a favor,

try the flavors on my list:

COCOA MOCHA MACARONI

TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY

CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW

CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW

TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO

TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO

LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN

MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN

ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI

YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI

SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH

SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH

BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE

POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL

PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM

PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM

BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER

CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER

AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT

PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT

COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD

CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD

ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP

TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP

GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA

LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA

ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET

WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT

I am Ebenezer Bleezer,

I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,

taste a flavor from my freezer,

you will surely ask for more.

3rd Graders loved this poem, of course you had to leave some room for the "EWWWW's" and the "AHHHH's." After reading the poem students talked about some of the poetic elements of rhyming and alliteration.  Students were then asked to brainstorm five flavors of ice cream combining foods that do not go together and adding some sort of ending like twist, swirl, dip, blast, etc. We then drew a five scooped ice cream cone together writing the flavors next to the scoop.  Students were then instructed to add detail to their scoops making them look like the flavor they created.  To finish them off we used colored pencil and if students had extra space they were to create a sign for their ice cream shop.

Here is my example:

Student Examples:

5th Grade Clay Pinch Pot Sports Spheres

5th Graders were very excited about this project.  For this project students made 3 different pinch pots to form a sports sphere of their choice. The challenge was that our sports sphere needed to be hollow.  Students wondered why we couldn't just roll one big piece of clay into a ball an call it good.  

1. It's a waste of clay.

2. There is a greater chance of air bubbles and the piece could break.

3. It would cause the piece to be heavier than what it needed to be.

Steps in making our sports sphere:

--Students started by rolling two even balls of clay. 

-- They formed two pinch pots that needed to be about the same size.

--They slipped and scored the rims of both pinch pots and put them together.

--Student then worked on smoothing their pinch pots together so it looked like one piece of clay.

--Once smoothed, students made another pinch pot for the stand.

--They slipped and scored the sphere to the pinch pot, placing the pinch pot upside down.

--Students then used a clay tool to draw into the clay showing what type of sport they chose.

--After they dried students used acrylic paint with a coat of clear acrylic to add color.

Pieces waiting to be painted.

Finished Examples:

Kindergarten Gingerbread Men

Kindergarteners decorated Gingerbread Men.  I made the gingerbread using this recipe.  We started the lesson by reading "The Gingerbread Pirates" By Kristin Kladstrup.

Overview

What if a brave Captain Cookie stood up to Santa? A fresh, funny story that sparkles with all the excitement of a pirate adventure — and all the magic of Christmas morning.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Jim and his mother are making pirate gingerbread men to leave for Santa. Jim’s favorite is Captain Cookie, who carries a gingerbread cutlass and has a toothpick peg leg. The captain is much too good to be eaten, so Jim keeps him close by his bed. But late that night, when Jim is fast asleep, Captain Cookie steptaps away on a daring adventure to find his pirate crew — and rescue them from that mysterious character he’s heard about: a cannibal named Santa Claus. At once contemporary and timeless, suspenseful and joyous, this masterfully illustrated tale is destined to be a new holiday classic.

Student's used pipe cleaners for an ornament holder they decorated their gingerbread men with puff paint and glitter mixed with medium.

1st Grade Paul Klee Famous Landmarks

For this lesson 1st graders looked at the artist Paul Klee for inspiration.  

"Castle and Sun" By Paul Klee

This lesson was inspired by a fellow art teacher.  I created stencils of famous buildings around the world including: The Eiffel Tower, The Statue of Liberty, The Taj Mahal, The Space Needle, and The Chrysler Building.  We started class by talking about architecture.  I then showed students the stencils and they were to see if they could recognize them.  Amongst all the 1st Grade classes all of the buildings were recognized.  Students were to trace five buildings overlapping them, they used sharpie marker to trace.  When students were done tracing they used watercolor to make each shape created a different color.  For the first few class I used watercolor, it got a little messy so we switched to watercolor crayons, which worked much better.

Elements of Art Snowman

Meet our new classroom friend!  I created a fun snowman focusing on the elements of design: Line, Shape, Color, Form, Value, Space, and Texture.  It's been a nice visual for the students to see different ways we can use the elements of Art.

Adaptive Art Snowmen

I teach a class of all special needs students ranging in all abilities.  Here is one of our latest projects.  To create this I cut out snowman stencils students glued cotton balls onto the stencil.  We then added googly eyes, a pipe cleaner for the nose, fuzzy balls for buttons, a piece of fabric for a scarf, and I had pre cut hats for them to glue on as well.  To create our backgrounds I created a foam stencil of a snowflake (using a die cut) students used silver paint and printed the snowflake on the blue background to create our snow scene.

They turned out great! Here are a few:

6th Grade Clay Sea Creatures

In this project students explored many important elements in the ceramic making process.

Vocabulary we focused on:
Slab- Handbuilding technique used when clay is rolled out and flattened.

Pinch Pot- Pinch in ceramics is a method of shaping clay be inserting the thumb of one hand into the clay and lightly pinching with the thumb and fingers while slowly rotating the ball in the palm of the other hand.

Slip & Score- refers to a method of joining two clay pieces together (like velcro).  First score the clay; this mean that you make lines and scratches in the surfaces that will be sticking together.  Then you slip it; you wet the surface with slip, using it like glue to stick pieces together.

Plastic- The quality of clay which permits it to be readily shaped into different forms without cracking, crumbling, or sagging. (Wet, Workable Clay)

To start this project students were given a 6"x6" piece of paper to use as a template.  Students were instructed to design a sea creature (fish, octopus, shark, sea horse etc.)  Their creature had to fill the 6 inch square they were given.  Students then cut out their sea creature to use as a template.  Students rolled out two slabs of clay and traced their templates on both slabs. After both slabs were cut out students slipped and scored the edges. To give the sea creature more form  students took a small piece of newspaper and put it between the two slabs.  Students then placed the slabs together (with newspaper in between) and smoothed the clay to be one piece.  The next step was to make a pinch pot. Students put their pinch pot upside down, slipped and scored it to their sea creature to act as a stand.

To add color we marbleized our sea creatures using liquid starch and acrylic paint.

Teacher Example: 

Students sea creatures are waiting to be marbleized. 

4th Grade Fantasy Forest-Creating Space

For this lesson students focused on the art element of space.

We explored this by creating fantasy trees.

I first showed students my example of the project they will be doing, and simply asked the question, "What do you see?"

After a few minutes of discussing we came up with two things:

1. The trees are changing size going from large to small.

2. The trees are overlapping, you never see a full tree.

Two ways to create space are through size and overlapping, which we used to do this project.

We started by drawing a diagonal line across the page.  This line acted as a guide to keep our trees in a row.  I then handed out a sheet that had creative ways to draw trees on them given to me by a fellow art teacher.  Students were asked to design a tree with an interesting shape and pattern.  We talked a little bit about reality vs fantasy and how we identify our trees as trees, but they are not realistic.  Students were instructed to draw that tree on that line starting large and drawing them small until they ran out of space.  We then made that line into a road and students could add a mountain, hill, moon, or sun in the background.

To add color we used water color.  We discussed warm and cool colors and how those colors can help us identify a season, a particular temperature, or time of day.  Students were instructed to either use warm colors on the sky and cool colors on the ground and vice versa.

To add a little more interest to our trees we discussed analogous colors: colors right next to each other on the color wheel.  Using the color wheel as a tool students painted their trees using analogous colors.

This lesson enabled students to really practice proper watercolor techniques.

2nd Grade Complementary Color Giraffes

2nd Grade students are learning about the color wheel, and our particular focus is on complementary colors.

Complementary Colors:  Colors that are across from each other on the color wheel and when placed next to each other they make the colors appear brighter.

I started the lesson by asking students what is a compliment?  

Most students answered, "when someone says something nice to you."

We can think of complementary colors in the same way.  They compliment each other, together they look nice.

Our focus was on these complementary colors:

Blue and Orange:

Violet and Yellow:

Red and Green:

After we learned a little about color theory we moved onto the next step of our project.  Students followed my directed drawing  step by step to draw a giraffe.

To color our giraffes students were allowed to pick one set of complementary colors.  One color would be used to paint the body the other to paint the spots.  As a final touch we added giraffe hair with construction paper that was the same color as the spots.

Teacher Examples:

  

Student Giraffes:

Being in the Holiday season many students chose red and green to make a "Christmas Giraffe."

These Giraffes look so fun hanging in the hallway together.