3rd Grade: Animal Unfairness? Let’s Raise Awareness!
3rd Grade: Animal Unfairness? Let’s Raise Awareness! For the last 8 weeks, my amazing 3rd-graders have been learning about the effects that littering has on animals and the environment. On the first day of class, my students entered the classroom to find a giant plastic bin full of water and plastic. We discussed what this […]
Faith Ringgold Inspired Family Portraits
Where do we live? Who is in our family? Recently, the first grade class read Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach. While reading the book, we payed close attention to the setting, and family members. Does this place look like Chapel Hill? Where is her home? Who is in her family? After the story, we discussed all […]
Shel Silverstein & Printmaking
Poetry and Imagery The fourth grade recently completed a project combining poetry, bookmaking, and printmaking. That’s a lot! We read “Clean Jean” as a class, and brainstormed on imagery from the poem. Questions included; What would Gene’s bubble suit look like? What’s a music tub? We picked one line from the poem, and illustrated it. […]
One Thousand Paper Cranes
The fifth grade class worked together to make a thousand origami cranes, while reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. The book follows a young girl, Sadako, living in post-war Hiroshima, Japan. She falls ill with leukemia due to radiation, and is told a legend that if she folds a thousand origami […]
Social Issues and Zines – 5th Grade
In this unit, students created zines that convey personal values and beliefs through an imagined superhero. Students were asked to think about a problem they see existing in the world around them and to create a superhero and superpower to solve it. We brainstormed as a class together, then students drafted their ideas onto a […]
5th Grade: No Kind Words Weft Behind
No Kind Words Weft Behind! Adventures of 5th grade! With every big project comes a lot of brain storming! My 5th graders have been working on semester long project that has introduced them to Pattern, Color Psychology, Peruvian culture, and Weaving! The project started off with an exercise using two pieces of scrap paper. On […]
1st grade: Know, Grow, Glow, Meet my friend Rainbow.pdf
FIRST GRADE ADVENTURES My oh my are my fabulous first graders talented or what?! With the start of every new school year, it’s always a little nerve-wracking meeting new faces and friends… SO I thought what better way to introduce my students to the classroom than meeting my fantastic friend, ROY G BIV! We began […]
Oil Resist Animal Watercolor Paintings
Kindergartners started out their unit of illustrated song-books and media exploration with oil resist watercolor paintings inspired by the book, Baby Beluga by Raffi, illustrated by Ashley Wolff. We read and sang Baby Beluga along with Raffi’s recording. The students loved to sing along with me – some even danced! After reading and singing, kindergartners learned […]
Color-Emotion Gelli Prints
As fourth grade entered into a unit about abstract expressionist art, the students delved deeply into the element of color and its ability to express emotion. In groups, students brainstormed extensive lists of emotion words. Then, independently, they considered many examples of monochromatic images, assigning an emotion they associated with each image to create their […]
1st grade encouragement drawings
1st grade read “The Dot” and discussed what encouragement looks like. We talked about all the different people who can encourage us (family, friends, teachers, and even pets!) and then they made drawings of these people (or pets). One student even drew me encouraging him! That’s the Mona Lisa in the background! Then, we talked […]
