Playing with 3D

As summer goes along and I am homeschooling through it, I make sure that on daily basis the kids have a "creative time". We have been into flat modeling lately, and are thinking about making a short animation with those. The beeswax based plastalina has been very good --not greasy and easy on little hands to get soft. The murmaid is by Anna and the Izbushka (Hut on chicken legs a traditional habitat of Baba Yaga is by Andrei)
Learning to take good photographs is a skill that I have yet to learn. My Photography 101 back in college 9 years ago left only a slight trace in my brain, but it is all slowly coming back to me.

I am having tons of fun with the Kokeshi dolls that I am making now, as well as several Matreshkas. Not sure if they will be a popular item, but they are extremely interesting to make. Puting an image onto a 3D object changes the perception a lot.
What do you think of this one?

There is a boy..

As many of you already know I teach Art on Saturdays in an after school program that my friend organized. It is actually more like a school after school. I teach kids aging from 3 years old to 7 years old.
Today I wanted to tell you some stories from my "teacher life".
No, not stories, more like short sketches...

There is a boy who used to cry every time he would walk into the room. He is a big boy, in one of my older classes. First I was at a loss what to do. I tried talking to him, but he would close like a sea shell and not let me in. He would draw tiny tiny pictures in the middle of the sheet of paper. He refused to use paint at first. Then he painted a little tiny thing ...And yesterday he Painted! It was like a door had opened and he let IT out. Whatever it was. But the boy was painting. And I did not want to disturb him, so involved he was. I was happy . I am most happy when I see something change. Good change.

There is a boy who would always say "NO". Do you like to play:"NO!" . Would you like to make a snow man? "No! I will make a Big Bad wolf and he will eat the snowman". The boy has the sweetest face with big blue eyes. He looks straight into my eyes and says his magic word "NO". He is 3 years old. Our last class he did not say it. We sculpted a family of dinosaurs , and he played along...He helped us make the legs and the tails, and make their home cozy and warm to live in. It made me feel warm and fuzzy and very proud of my teaching skills;) Even though, it is mostly the fact that he started attending the school twice a week and got used to all of us.

But seeing thing happen, seeing kids become loose and start making things--is a high for me. I will keep writing about my students, there is still a boy who drew a horse (worth putting into a Museum of Modern Art) and a girl that mixes colors like the impressionists (5 years old), but that will be next time. I have to get to bed and ready for another Monday. Hopefully it will be spring tomorrow.
The painting in the beginning of the post is by another student of mine, virtual student actually(I write lesson plans, and her Mom sends me scans for review). I have never met her, but her Mom found me on Etsy and we have become pen pals. This girl has the most wonderful imagination! This is her take on my "green" lesson. The giraffe seems perfectly at peace in this lively happy place.

A lesson plan

Some of you might find this useful, and I find that it is crucial to write down good lesson plans. Being a computer addicted soul, what better way to write it than here?

My last Fridays lesson was about green.
Each color has a family. A large one too...Uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, grandparents and many many others. And since they are all related they do look a lot alike, but still they are all different.

Dark green, light green? could be cousins.
Yellow-green and olive--could be mother and son.
blue-green and mud green --brothers?

The idea of the lesson was to find them all. Find as many as possible. First on a painting done by one of the Masters (Monet in this particular instance), then in a flower that I have growing nearby, and then on the paper. We used watercolors, since this is the medium I am best familiar with. I let the kids use my own paint and my own brushes, and thus the quality of the colors was as good as it gets. They were very happy about that, and have proven to be a very careful lot. I would not do it with all of my students, just these ones;)

And here are some of the pictures from the lesson.
We ended up drawing the jungles. Lots of green leaves of all shapes and sizes, colors and hues. At least as much as they could imagine.