Recovering the Classics

One lesson I did with my Computer Graphics class last fall was "Recovering the Classics". 

I especially enjoyed this lesson as I love reading, but it seemed that most students enjoyed it even if they aren't big readers.

Here is the information from Recovering the Classics

Recovering the Classics is a crowdsourced collection of original covers for great works in the public domain where anyone can contribute.

As part of a new initiative announced by the White House, we are partnering with the New York Public Library and the Digital Public Library of America to bring these amazing covers to libraries and schools nationwide.

Why? Sadly, many of the greatest classics in the public domain are left with poorly designed or auto-generated covers that fail to capture what makes these books exciting and inspiring to us. So we invited illustrators, typographers, and designers of all stripes to create new covers for 100 of the greatest works in the public domain.

Anyone can contribute, and all designs are available for sale as prints, apparel, and other products to support the artists.

Host your own local Recovering the Classics exhibit as part of our 50x50 campaign.

After explaining the project to my students, I shared a google sheet with the class so that each of them could sign up for a book in which they were interested. I asked that if they hadn't read the book they chose, that they do a little research reading summaries and getting a feel for the book and its style. I tried to get them to avoid looking at covers and posters that had already been made for their particular book and to avoid copying the style of a movie version. This is a skill we are still practicing. 

We also looked at some of the beautiful examples of covers designed by artists and collected by Recovering the Classics to show how a style can be developed.

When the projects were complete, I put up a bulletin board with my students' designs on one side and the Recovering the Classics designs on the other. We did a little hallway critique where I asked each student to point out another student's design that they liked and say why they thought it was successful.

Here is a link to a video I took to show the display: https://www.instagram.com/p/-cejiNiKh3/?taken-by=jhartclass

You can also search #RecoveringTheClassics

Donors Choose Books!

A couple months ago I was encouraged by Erica from Art Project Girl to try out Donors Choose. I wrote a project proposal for a book display and 28 awesome art books and the project was funded! It was a pretty easy process and I didn't even know all of the donors. I did know some. They're pretty awesome.

We've been thrilled with the new reading center in the art room. Check out the photos from the thank you package here! 

Up next, I try to get a tablet so students can document and share their artwork and a storage shelf to create a collage center with room for all the supplies to be displayed in a location the students can actually reach!

As requested, here is a list of the books we received:
Eric Carle's Animals Animals
The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse
Mouse Paint
Mouse Shapes
Henri's Scissors
A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet
Frida (English Language Edition)
Perfect Square
I'm the Best Artist in the Ocean
Journey on a Cloud: A Children's Book Inspired by Marc Chagall
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Louise Loves Art
Lines That Wiggle
A Little Bit of Oomph
Too Much Glue

Where the Wild Things Are

I Spy: An Alphabet in Art

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes

Not a Box

Leaf Man

Eric Carle's Dragons, Dragons

Ish

The Dot

Sky Color

Here's Looking at Me: How Artists See Themselves (Bob Raczka's Art Adventures)

The Pot that Juan Built

Spicy Hot Colors: Colores Picantes

Red is a Dragon: A Book of Colors

Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Trucks

Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Animals

Art and Max

I am Wild When I...

Before the movie Where the Wild Things Are came out a couple years ago, there was a really awesome blog for it (We Love You So). They posted things about the movie, Maurice Sendak's book, and just cool artwork. One thing I remember seeing, though there is too much information for me to locate the exact link now, was a kids' activity where they were asked to finish the sentence "I am wild when I ______." I wanted to do some WTWTA art projects back in October and didn't want to stick with just drawing wild things (though we did that too, in 1st grade). I printed off sheets with the beginning of the sentence and space for the students to dictate their writing to me. I read the book to them and we talked about the story, especially the parts where Max was acting wild. I asked them to think of when they are wild like having fun, not wild like going to hurt someone. The students drew an illustration for their sentence and I wrote it for them in sharpie. If I were doing this with older kids, I would have asked them to write their own sentence. Since some of the Kinders are still learning to recognize letters, I figured there was nothing wrong with me printing it for them. This project was easily done in one class period. I loved the different answers the students came up with. Some tried to tell me exactly the same thing as a student they were sitting by but it didn't take too much prompting for them to think of something else to say.

"I am a triangle"- what a silly little boy, he is a Pre-K student that comes to Art with a Kindergarten class.

This little guy was definitely inspired by the book!

Eric Carle

I get email updates from Eric Carle. In the latest email, there was a link to his blog! The blog is really cool, it has artwork and writing, his latest post is about his childhood Christmas memories.

http://ericcarleblog.blogspot.com/

The blog reminded me of the Eric Carle unit I did during student teaching last spring. Each grade K-6 did a wax resist painted paper collage project inspired by Eric Carle.

Kindergarten students learned about complementary colors and made fruit pictures. (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

1st grade students learned about the moon while making moon and stars pictures (Papa Please Get the Moon for Me)

2nd grade students learned about warm/cool colors and made caterpillars. (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

3rd grade students cut hearts from their painted papers (3rd grade did wax resist and tempera with texture combs) which were displayed in the hall for Valentine's day.

4th grade students drew a letter out of a hat and chose a word to illustrate for that letter.

5th grade students made imaginary animals. To get the students thinking about combining parts from different animals, they were instructed to just draw the head of an animal. Next, the drawings were rotated in their group and each student added to it (exquisite corpse style.)

K-5th grade students were in charge of painting their own papers and 6th grade students were assigned a color to create for the classmates to use

6th grade students were to tell some sort of story with three parts/three illustrations. It could be a song lyric, joke, story, nursery rhyme, or process.

A is for Art: An Abstract Alpahabet

I have no idea what happened to the formatting, the text is not cooperating like it usually does!

A is for Art: An Abstract Alpahabet is one of my very favorite books.

The book was created by contemporary artist and Caldecott Award winner Stephen T. Johnson.

I saw Stephen speak at the Kansas Art Education Association 2008 Fall Conference in Lawrence, KS.

You can view artwork and read about his books by visiting his website

http://www.stephenjohnsonstudio.com/

Synopsis: A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet is a remarkable journey of discovery about art and language through painting, collage, and sculpture by Caldecott Honor artist Stephen T. Johnson. With literal renderings of each letter, complete with witty titles and playful, alliterative captions, Johnson’s abstract art forges connections between words, objects, and ideas.

Can you find the hidden letters? Look closely and you will see a letter C made of colorful candy, a letter H hidden in a hook, and an S in a soft shadow. From A to Z, each stunning, original work of art will stimulate the imagination and creativity of children and adults alike.

At one of my schools, a rotation is set up for each class to have a lesson taught by the Specials teachers while the grade level teachers collaborate.

The lessons are supposed to integrate our content area and either math or reading.

I came up with A is For Art: An Abstract Alphabet Alliteration Alphaboxes Activity.

I am a big fan of alliteration. Alliteration is when a group of words all start with the same letter like the title of the book or "bouncing baby boy".

Alphaboxes are a reading/vocabulary strategy in which there is a box for each letter of the alphabet where new or important vocabulary can be recorded.

I modeled the strategy and we each wrote down "Alliteration" in the "A" box for the first entry.

I read each page to the class and then we recorded vocabulary words for each letter.

Some were art vocabulary and some were just interesting (like kapok!)

For "A" we wrote down alliteration, abstract, and affixed.

For "B" we wrote down bisected.

We got through the first half of the alphabet in our 40 minute class and the students were having so much fun they asked if we could finish the book in the next rotation.

I HIGHLY recommend this book (as well as Stephen Johnson's others) and I promise you will not regret the purchase!

I have one copy for home and one for school!

Book Inspired Pumpkins

These are the two pumpkins I have carved so far this year! The first one, with one of the Where The Wild Things Are characters was for my niece, Rosie, who is a big fan of the book. (Almost as big a fan as me.) By the way, there is an awesome blog for the WTWTA movie: www.weloveyouso.com. I made the Very Hungry Caterpillar pumpkin last night. Part of a PTO fundraiser for my schools is a pumpkin carving contest so we'll see how much the students like it!