greyscale cityscapes

Fifth Grade cityscapes and monochromatic color mixing expedition!

more Kente Cloth-inspired woven paintings

The rest of the pictures from this wonderful project: Kente Cloth Weavings!

Background paintings, bright bold patterns with painted with warm color tempera cakes. 

Recycled newspaper painted over with tempera cakes then cut into strips for weaving. 

Some final products!

clay cookies

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kindergarten clay 'cookies' made out of model magic printed with rubber stamps for texture. 

We painted them with a mix of tempera and acrylic medium for a 'glaze' today. 

These plastic bowls worked perfectly for keeping

 a hold of them, labeling names, and sending them home. 

Recycled Paper Kente Cloth

We are working on our follow up weaving lesson. 

I just had to share a few peeks because they are so pretty and cheerful. 

We have been learning about Kente Cloth, and I happened to have studied abroad in Ghana so I have a couple cloths. We made strips of Kente Cloth using paper that we first painted patterns with tempera cakes. 

Then wove both ends using newspaper we had painted with tempera paint and I cut into strips.  

We "don't do holidays" at my school so this was a great and meaningful way for me to get some hearts and pink into the mix this week. I'm going to roll them up with a string and send them home on Monday.

 

Today I tested out the TP roll-->heart stamper trick and it worked great!

More info and pictures of the steps to come later tonight and tomorrow.

 If you teach about Kente Cloth this book is my favorite

and the information, names, places, are all very accurate.

I highly recommend it and the kids love the story!

Recycling, Weaving, & TEAR BEARS- oh my!

First grade began our recycling unit with a weaving project using making use of the previously used table craft paper coverings cut into strips.

Most of my students had never done weaving before so this was our intro lesson.

This is one of my favorite books for introducing the basic concept of 'recycling' to children. 

We turned out weavings into blankets which I mounted on backing paper.

One day was devoted to "tear bears" - a pinterest inspiration I had found- and shrunk to tiny scale. 

 Lastly, we added tiny self-portraits (with the eyes closed - so cute) 

to put to bed with teddy and two pillows.