Larger than Life

Beginning of the year, meant lots of self portraits in various forms.  6th grade channeled all of their social media knowledge and took a look at avatars and cartoons.  We discovered that avatars often have exaggerated physical features.  We then compared these to Japanese manga and anime.  I was surprised many knew some mangas (Dragon-ball Z and others from my high school days). We also talked about the literary form of exaggeration (I like to use the fishing story example). We used faceyourmanga to exaggerate our physical features and of course had to blow them up to larger than life size!

We used a grid to help us enlarge our avatars and keep the correct proportion.  We then talked baout what we want to exaggerate about ourselves.  Often we focus on the things that we do not like rather than the things that are good about ourselves.  I have then make a list of the things they love about themselves and things about them that they want to exaggerate.   These are written in the background of their portraits.

I absolutely love how these turned out!  They did a fantastic job enlarging something that started so small to something so big!  They got a kick out of seeing our 3 and 4 year olds seeing these large portraits out in the hallway.  For some reason they were mesmerized by these portraits! 

Egyptian Cartouche Jewelry: 6th Grade

Sixth Grade learned about Ancient Egypt in both Social Studies and Art! In art class, we looked at Egyptian jewelry and hieroglyphics. In this ancient writing characters surrounded by a oval ending in a bar on the bottom is called a cartouche. This denotes a name. We carved out our names and turned these cartouches into Egyptian jewelry.

Future Cities

This past Saturday was the Future Cities Competition.  This year my 8th graders participated in the engineering event.  I just wanted to post some pictures of their city!  Though we did not place in the finals we did win the Student choice award.  This award is voted on by all of the student participates who vote for their favorite city.  I think it's an honor that my 8th grader's city was chosen by their peers! 

This was my first year running the program and had no clue what to expect, that being said I have a slew of information and ideas to guide their learning for next year! 

Our city was on hinges so we could lift it up for the judges to see.  I think this was one of the students' favorite features.

Our story was NYC was hit by a tsunami, with limited land mass they started to build underground.

Since subways were replaced with living space, we created the TTS, a transport system that runs through the entire city.  This was also our moving part.  Little capsules moved through the tubes.  One for personal vehicles and the other for commercial use. 

The greenhouse gets it light from the ground surface to grow plants for the underground living space.  We also have an elevator to transport supplies and people who own their own cars and do not use the TTS.

Large skylights provide natural light for those in the subterranean living.  We have a few located in Central Park.

Wearable Art: Wed. 18th 1-3pm

This Wednesday I will be teaching at Monkey See, Monkey Do.... Children's Bookstore.  I am super excited for it is a Wearable Art class!  One of the projects is a T-shirt scarf you see me sporting in the picture above. 

Wearable Art Workshop
1 – 3pm (ages 7 and up)
Kids will stencil their own shirt and create wearable items using old shirts—scarves and rosette pins! This fun-filled class will inspire creativity and one-of-a kind projects! We’ll read A Girl Named Pants Builds a Business to further enhance the theme “I Can Do Anything!”
$25/student.

Contact the bookstore to sign up!