We teach our children that letters have sounds, that sounds combine to form words, that words combine to form sentences, that sentences grouped in just the right way form the stories we all know and love. We teach our children to read and write.
Last week it hit me as I was helping my students mix color wheels. I was teaching color literacy, an equally important academic (and life) skill.
Color is scientific. Color can be harmonious or not harmonious. People who understand this can use this knowledge to their advantage—artists, painters, designers, people just trying to get dressed in the morning.
This time in the school year can be particularly difficult—a sort of doldrums. Everyone has been working hard for many months and summer still feels quite a ways off. You're starting to feel the pressure of all that you haven't accomplished…or wanted to. Standardized testing may be looming. The weather around Southern California becomes a confusing mix of sweater days and t-shirt days and at least for me, the urge to purge kicks in strong with garage sale season right around the corner.
With April being National Poetry Month, why not infuse your last weeks of school with a focus on the wonder of words. Poetry is at the same time economical and extravagant. It has the power to unlock a child's voice and encourage writing skills in ways that prose and essay writing simply cannot. My own daughter has a stunning gift for poetry that would never have been unearthed had we not delved into reading and writing poems at a young age. Don't be intimidated, jump in, be creative and have fun. Try to incorporate a little something into everyday.
• Revisit past four&twentyposts for some ideas. A personal favorite uses chocolate bars as inspiration for writing poems about place and taste!
• Participate in Poem In Your Pocket Day on April 14. I love the idea of having a poem on hand to sponatneously share with family and friends throughout the day.
• Great Poems to Teach lists important poems, some with audio readings. Poetry 180 also has a compiled list of poems geared towards high school students—one for every day of the school year. Both are helpful for getting to know famous poets and various forms.
• Start a book club with friends using our poetry-focused, litertaure discovery guides. Younger students can explore animal poetry with our Douglas Florian guide while Love That Dog and Locomotion both tell profound stories through the use of verse.
• Use technology to share poetry with the world! Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, PowerPoint, Flickr, iMovie, digital cameras….the possibilities are endless.
• Here are some really creative ideas for word play from The Crafty Crow. Click through to Austin Kleon's inventive newspaper blackout poems. What a great exercise in eliminating words to find the poem that was hiding there all along.
• Embark on our Exploring Poetry unit. Read about it here from a blogger-mom who did!
I stumbled upon one of my prized possessions the other day, paper and pencil in hand, a writer looking for creative inspiration. As I unfolded the mass of faded-yellow legal pad and saw Sara’s profuse notes staring back at me, I felt the smile stretch from ear to ear and was taken back to the summer of 1997. Who needs a time machine?
For the coming school year our desire was to continue to provide opportunities for directed year-long research. The intrinsic reward of this type of activity is that children discover over time to value work that is not instantaneous. Beyond that, the objective is to develop the muscle necessary for independent discovery, which will have a direct connection to critical thinking. But there’s always a twist.
Back in time, Sara and I are in my kitchen. Where else? Chattering away we are brainstorming. We want to inspire our young girls (then first and third graders) to follow the thread of perseverance to its logical conclusion. What if they engage in research of famous women from history who will model the skill? What if we use great picture books and incorporate sophisticated art materials? Yes! And of course it will be great fun! And, think about it, I mean, we will be exploring literature, and this is history too, right? Ah, the glory of cross-curricular activities!
So, with a baby on my hip stirring up dinner in a pot on the stove, I imagined with Sara, her legal pad in hand chock full of bibliographic lists of famous women biographies she had researched to get our girls started, we constructed a series of research questions that the girls would use to guide them in their research and developed a presentation format. We decided that, for each book read, our girls would write a report and craft a creative project depicting the famous woman.
Detail from Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride by Pam Munoz Ryan
Looking back, the trick to this kind of research is to be prepared. Because we had a plan, we were able to sit with our girls, take turns reading aloud with them, and guide them as they developed the skill gathering just the right tidbits about the famous woman’s life to include in their simple research paper. We had time to help them explore art materials such as paint and canvas, chalk pastels, and textiles. We were able to encourage them as they endeavored to craft a creative project that would not only celebrate each famous woman, but also would propel them into the process of seeing a creative work from the start to the finish line.
Set as a two hour per week activity, generally speaking, we read and wrote about one book per week unless the book was long, in which case this leg of the activity could take a couple weeks or more (the “there is no hurry” truth applies here), and we completed the artistic activity in two or three weeks. From there, it’s all, well, history.
Only looking back do I see the great pay-off, our girls, all grown now, Hannah is 21 and Evelyn is 19, are women that turn heads not only because they are lovely, but because they are busy following the thread of perseverance to its logical conclusion and are consequently girls who dare to dream.
– Kim
Detail of Faith Ringgold project – fabric wall hanging
Spread from Dinner at Aunt Connie's House by Faith Ringgold
Detail of Eleanor Roosevelt project – acrylic on canvas
Eleanor by Barbara Cooney
Detail of Wilma Rudolf project – colored pencil, pen, acrylic, collage
Our new catagory, Idea Share will be just that…a place to share ideas that we love. Quick little posts about quick little ideas that will make teaching and learning a little easier or little more special.
The styrofoam and paperboard trays that are used to package many meats and vegetables from the grocery store are resuable as palettes for paint and glue, or catch-alls for small craft materials during project time.
It all begins with a never ending profusion of nuclear explosions in our sun. Eight minutes later all that radiation arrives at the earth in the form of electo-magnetic waves. Outside we are engulfed by white light. Thanks to Mr. Newton, who bent light with a prism—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet—we understand that all colors are physically contained in white light. Inside the eye, a curious thing is happening.
If you were holding this tomato in the palm of your hand in a dark cave, it would be black.
Everything on earth is made of atoms which are full of invisible energy. If the energy contained in white light is compatible with the energy of an object, that energy is absorbed by the object. Energy that is not compatible is bounced off the object.
Color.
This tomato is absorbing, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet energy.
The pupil then allows just the right amount of light into the eye to detect precise color. Rods and cones on the retina of the eye pick up the signal and decode the electromagnetic waves via the optic nerve in a mysterious spot at the back of the brain.
I was alone with my youngest son on a blustery Wednesday. All was cozy until I notice the symptoms of boredom surfacing. Honestly, I was hoping that imagination would entertain Søren, that I could tackle my never-ending stacks of work, but soon realized this was selfish, an instance of my taking his creativity and contemplative nature for granted.
So I pulled out a book of abstract expressionist paintings and turned pages for a while. I listened carefully for long while to Søren’s observations about color, mood, and story. This led to an idea. I asked Søren if he wanted to draw something like these artists? I already knew the answer. I was so happy to pull out my dusty box of printing materials, happy to walk Søren through the process of making a relief block print.
I’ve tried linoleum with young children with little success because the medium demands a significant degree of fine motor control. Nowadays making a relief block print is much easier because the carving is done on a material more like a plastic eraser. So I got my son started, hovering close by to direct him as needed through all the stages of the process. Søren worked happily for three hours straight drawing, carving, inking, printing… even cleaning up!
I could have coxed my son toward independent play, but I read a book on the treadmill about happiness that reminded me, “Most people do not regularly ask, ‘Will this make happier?’ before engaging in some action. Rather, they do what they do because it feels good at the moment.”
I want my artistic Søren to have the ability to make choices that will make him deeply happy. Right now my job as his mother, his mentor, is to help him fill his toolbox with possibility.
– Kim
» Here's a great video tutorial on how to make your own block prints.
» For an incredibly inspiring look into the life and work of an amazing artist who creates hand-carved stamps visit Geninne's Art Blog.
» For a beginner's approach to printmaking with younger ones visit this post about using scratch foam.
Back in the summer of 2003, I took my children to Modigliani & the Artists of Montparnasse at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sketchbook and pencil in hand, I patted each of them on the back and set them free to explore the works as they saw fit. I love observing the creative process. I felt fortunate to wander with them among works that we have admired from afar in books and on the web.
The exhibition, a collection of works by Modigliani, his friends, and contemporaries, might have been better titled “Conversations from Montparnasse” because the collection was a reunion of works developed long ago in a bohemian Paris neighborhood. I was excited to see how my children would join the conversation.
My oldest son Taylor was nine. He had been studying piano for a bit more than a year, but seemed at the time more interested in visual art. Three works captured his imagination at this exhibit: Dancer, Second Version by Sonia Delauney 1916, Black Hair (Young Seated Girl With Brown Hair), Modigliani, and The City, Fernand Leger 1919. These are the works he decided to study. I watched him study and sketch the first two carefully. When he came to the third, Leger’s painting, he simply stood there, soaking the image into his imagination.
Later that day I heard Taylor plunking away on the piano, but didn’t give it much thought until this past spring when he won a competition for an original piano composition and had to write program notes:
Industrial Animation, a composition for piano by Taylor Bredberg
The story behind this piece began seven years ago after visiting an exhibit, Modigliani and the Art of Montparnasse and after watching a set of short films called Masters of Russian Animation. Here I learned to appreciate industrial beauty and fell in love with the dissonance of Russian music that inspired the main melody. The next part of the journey is very dull considering that the melody sat dormant until recently. In a moment of composer’s block I began to sift through some of my older sketches and came upon the melody. It was unrefined but still had something to it, so I took to it and started working. Prokofiev and Shostakovich, being two of my favorite composers, heavily influenced its mood and shape. Soon enough, along with four brand new melodies, the work is finished, an Industrial Animation at last.
Da Vinci’s sketchbooks come to mind, page after page teaming with elaborate ideas, “Art is never finished only abandoned.” All those years ago when we visited the LACMA exhibit Taylor was simply encouraged to abandon some of his ideas into a little sketch book.
Guess it was worth the trip to the local art museum.
In my guild, fall is Person I Admire season. This year I had an anniversary—five students including my eldest son, who had participated in Person I Admire once a year for ten years in a row. I gave them each a few minutes before the presentations began to reminisce and to tell the group what they found personally significant. Listening, I realized that this activity had evolved into much more than a clever way to get kids to read. What began as a culminating activity, an opportunity to present a biographical report in costume from the point of view of a famous person, became an ongoing academic thread that has built into my children and my students the value of imagination.
I will never forget the year that my oldest son, now a ten year Person I Admire veteran, declared that he wanted to research Frank Gehry. There was no doubt in my mind what had inspired him. His weekly music lessons are situated in the conservatory across the street from what was, back then, the construction site of Frank Gehry's LA masterpiece, Walt Disney Concert Hall. So Taylor read books about Gehry (over and over and over again), visited a local museum exhibiting Gehry’s work (numerous times) and spent hours in the hands-on architectural activity room inspired by Gehry’s work. We even went on a driving tour to see other buildings designed by Frank Gehry in Los Angeles. Eventually architectural sculptures began cropping up all over the house—a veritable metropolis in my living room. The application of learning was alive and well. The ultimate fruit of my son's research, research that went on for three years, was to culminate in October of 2003 with the public unveiling of the concert hall.
Climbing the stairs a few paces ahead of me donning his idea of the perfect costume, Gehry’s concert hall in the form of an enormous hat, my son was deaf to the buzz of astonished whispers swirling. Surveying the lay of the land, connecting one by one with the massive shapes, he was unaware that his presence detracted attention from the inauguration of the icon itself.
While gazing at the shimmering mosaic rose pool, a couple shaking their heads in amusement walked right up to my little boy and invited him to be part of their photo, a photo I was asked to snap. As quick as the fascinated strangers wrapped their arms around my son’s small shoulders the shutter clicked. Handing the camera back to a man I’ll never see again, he flashed me a grin and thanked me for the experience. I followed silently two steps behind my son chasing sunlight on stainless steel.
Another man approached the hat only to discover, eyes dropping, that it rested on the head of a small boy. Introducing himself to my son as an award-winning architect he listened intently to the tale of the hat. Head shaking, eyes twinkling, he patted my son’s back, and looked to the sky in wonderment. In the end he asked for my son’s name and promised to commit it to memory, “I’ll be watching for you Taylor.”
Then came a barrage of curious strangers—a tour bus of people snapping pictures like paparazzi of the boy and his hat, fascinated parents demanding the name of my son’s teacher, students, security guards, and weary teachers wanting this formula for success. Each managed a moment with my boy and his great silver-winged hat. Taylor gladly shared the story of watching the icon slowly come to life, of the man named Frank O. Gehry who made buildings inspired by fish, and of his own research project that sparked the idea for the hat that triggered all the storytelling in the first place.
Swarms of people came to experience an architectural inauguration and were captivated by something they had not anticipated— a boy wearing a monumental hat. Toward the end of our visit, as I stood beside Gehry’s swooping silver sculpture pondering my son’s interactions with perfect strangers a man touched my shoulder and looked intently into my eyes, “You must be doing something right if your kid is into Gehry.”
I realized in that moment that these strangers were reaching out to touch imagination in a bland world. Crossing paths with this child, who connected with creativity and engaged in the work necessary to bring an imagination into reality, forced these strangers to step outside of what they believed a child is capable of and jolted their stereotype. I was in the midst of a slice of humanity that had journeyed afar to identify with a stainless steel exclamation point. It struck me that creativity is indeed a great magnet.
Art, whatever the form, begs its audience to attend to our longing to eradicate a haunting sense of disconnection. People had come in droves to celebrate face-to-face with Frank Gehry's imagination, had come to prove that outrageous dreams are possible. Gehry’s architectural masterpiece begs the question, “Why do we hide in dimly lit boxes behind blinds that keep us safely isolated from the risk of imagination?” His soaring structure presents a challenge to chase away the complacency that isolates humanity. My son, wearing a hat inspired by an architect he has never met, opened the door of imagination for people he will likely never meet again. His hat drew connections like a magnet, broke down walls, and briefly caused lives to intersect in a way that is noteworthy. My son audaciously locking arms with Gehry implored, “Look, me too!” Like Gehry before him, Taylor responded to the creative impulse, opened the blinds, and let the real thing in.
To culminate our Da Vinci Summer, everyone lent a hand in the creation of a larger-than-life i Madonnari Mona Lisa. Such a fun way to create art together! Here’s our process in pictures…
