Sowing Seeds

Christmas break is fast approaching, and the students are showing it! This week was a tough one to harness their focus, but we were able to get them excited with our final project for 2009. Armed with packs and packs of seeds, plastic bags, and coffee filters, Living Histories’ students started their first seeds of the 09/10 school year!





I like starting seeds this time of year; mild Southern California winters mean we can start planting the in the ground even before spring becomes official. Literally ‘planting the seed’ in their heads before break is a great way to get students thinking about all of our spring garden projects to come when they return to school.



The project itself is fairly simple; we use wet coffee filters to host the seeds and then place them in plastic sandwich bags that go in windows. Students get to pick several types of seed they want to start, writing the name of each plant on that bag so we know what is what when planting time comes.





I always love watching their reaction to this project - for many, its one of the first time they have ever seen a seed, and it’s crazy to watch their expression as their mind races to figure out how such a small thing can grow into a plant! They love comparing seeds with their classmates, noticing the different sizes and textures. When we get back, they will also be charting which seeds have started and which haven’t, how big some art - creating a graph to compare and figure out if there are varying conditions (water, sun exposure, etc.) contributing to the differences; it’s a great segway to introduce concepts of the scientific process and it’s connection to art and creativity.





We have also been using the idea of ‘recipes’ a lot thematically lately (see earlier posts on them creating ‘recipes for a good community’), so in addition to the planting, students wrote or drew out ‘recipes’ for growing plants.







They are VERY excited about this project - already checking the seeds daily and asking if they can take the vegetables and fruit home to eat them! I am hoping we have some impressive results when we return to class in two weeks. We’ll have to contain ourselves to growing indoors for about two months, but I am already in talks with school principals on locations for our gardens this year, with high hopes that they can be big enough to yield enough food for students to use in cooking and nutrition lessons, and perhaps even to sell in an entrepreneurial/business project as well. Much more to come on all of this - keep checking back for updates!

Happy holidays!

More Picasso portraits

Students have been completing their Picasso portraits this week - loving how these are turning out! I’m always fascinated by how they go about creating an image of themselves.

For this project, students are building on what they have learned about how symbols, shape and colors can be used to express feelings or ideas. They then connect that to abstract art,looking at examples of Picasso’s work. They are then given a few copies of a printed image of their face, and asked to ‘reconstruct it’ to express some sort of feeling. Our older students have been doing writing to accompany their pieces; too small to photograph well, but they are really interesting and a great exercise in helping them to conceptualize what it is they are creating.

Here are some examples from 4th, 5th and 6th graders at Longfellow:

Picasso portraits

Last week students were hard at work on their self portrait projects. This is one of my very favorite activities - students love getting to work with their own image, and it’s a great lesson to emphasize the ongoing theme of identity and self that we have been working with the last few weeks. We lead into the lesson by discussing notions of abstract art, how colors and shapes can convey a feeling, and how we can use those tools to express how we feel about ourselves. We then look at some of Picasso’s abstract work, thinking about how he stylistic choices conveyed feelings and ideas. From there, students dive in on their own images, creating a version of themselves as they see fit.

Below are some examples from 1st graders a Hamilton:

An afternoon in the park...

This week was a bit of a catch up one for us; students had a chance to finish up projects from their first three weeks of school (portfolios, identity collages and animal symbol masks), and we threw in a fun fall and Native American inspired activity for some diversity as well.

Today was Back to School Night at many of PUSD’s campuses, which means the after school program has to relocate for the afternoon so teachers and custodians can get the rooms looking nice and neat and clean. At Longfellow, we ended up at a local park, and decided to hold “Living Histories classes’ there. Bringing paints to the park on a day I had Kindergartners is either evidence of my ‘hardcore art teacherness’ or a lack of sanity. Maybe a bit of both.

But the project was wonderful. We had the students first do leaf rubbings, then paint the leaves, which they loved. I got the idea from Geninne’s Art Blog - I thought leaves she painted and such a great idea, and figured it was a project our students would enjoy. So far they are loving it - can’t wait to get these hung up in our room and let the older students have a shot at it.

Photos from our day in the park below:

Great article on youth gardening

As I was working on the initial planning stages of our own garden program for Living Histories, I came across this great article on school gardening in England - very inspirational stuff.

"Experts say introducing children to gardening at an early age helps to contribute to their mental and physical health. Teachers at Kingsway have already noticed an improvement in behaviour and concentration among their pupils.

Liam Jackson, head teacher at the school, says: "We've not quite done a full cycle yet but the children have seen the whole concept of watching, watering and nurturing vegetables – and now they've harvested them. This is so much more important than bringing in tins of food, which is what would have happened normally.

"The next stage is to get more families involved by getting them into the school. The children are very knowledgeable about vegetables – they know what they're doing now."

Living Histories garden project with the Madison community at the Armory temporary site in 2004, Pasadena CA

Living Histories excited to be launching our own community gardening program this school year as part of our 09/10 'campaigns'. Community gardening is an issue we are passionate about. As the article in the Telegraph points out, the lessons for youth are numerous: science, ecology, health, cooking. Living Histories programs tie in themes of art, writing, & indigenous cultures and traditions as well, and most importantly, give students a hands on lesson in service learning and community improvement. Getting a garden going can always be a bit of a struggle - location, maintenance and start up materials are always an issue - but once they are established, can be a resource for youth community wide.

As one of our two 'campaigns' for the 09/10 school year, Living Histories will be launching a community garden program later on this fall, where we will teach students about gardening, sustainability, ecology, art and writing through our project based model, but will also be leading students through an entrepreneurial experience as well - showing them how to set up and run their gardens as small 'social entrepreneur' enterprises that will benefit their local communities.

We are very excited to get this up and launched in the upcoming months - check back here for more updates, and join our after school action list for the latest news!

Some student work from this week...

Below are some photos of student work from this week. These were made by 4th graders in Tiffany and Krisztina's class at Hamilton. Students are making portfolios to help organize their work they will produce this year. We discussed the concept of 'creativity' and how that helps one come up with solutions, ideas and what not, and how it's important to value what we create, hence the portfolios.

We then asked students to design their portfolios around the idea of 'discovery' and 'exploring', since that is what the creative process is about. We had them pick one image from a stack of magazine pages we had that to them represented one of these ideas. Narrowing down the process to picking an image and then designing the rest of the portfolio around that image helps on lots of levels: it teaches students about symbolism and representation, our topic next week, it helps them learn collage techniques (young students tend to want to just cut out a bunch of random photos, paste them and be done with it, this helps them learn more about the design process and the thought process behind it), and it helps them conceptually grasp the idea of a 'theme'. We asked them to try to draw the rest of their photo; if they cut out a picture of a forest, for example, we ask them to try to show what else was in that forest, to show how it was about discovery.

A few examples are below - I really love how some of these turned out!

Week one of a new year...

It’s always kinda amazing how fast summer seems to fly by, but I was excited and ready to be getting back to school this year.



Our first week back is usually about introductions and group projects; really focusing on orienting students around the idea of our class being a community and going about work collaboratively.

We have two sites this first quarter: Longfellow, and Hamilton. Both schools are going to be following the same curriculum, as we are hoping to find means for the students - most likely online - to exchange ideas and compare their approaches to the projects.

The first project we jumped into this week were group murals. We do this by having students work collaboratively, in big groups, on large sheets of paper - rolling paper that is used for packaging is typically what we will use. Thematically, we asked students to first think about all the types of things they knew how to do, asking them to make a list even, for fun. Then, collaboratively, we asked them to depict those things on their mural, ideally showing how they could put their talents together. Overall, it went over pretty well - especially for their first activity since coming back!


Next up was the flower pot project - symbolically us ‘growing things together’ - it’s always popular. The kids like drawing on the pots, it’s a fun collaborative effort. We asked them to depict images of ecosystems, one of two words we learned, or ways that they could help their community. Younger students focused on doing a drawing of any type together.

Overall, a great start to the year - we are very excited about jumping into the projects we have planned for the weeks ahead!

Back to school!

We are back in action!

Our students at Longfellow and Hamilton got back to work this week, and we couldn't be more excited! they are starting off their year with Living Histories by learning about our journaling practice, doing group murals, and decorating flower pots for their 'grow together' project. More details coming soon!

Urge Congress to Increase Funding for Afterschool Programs

Note: this is from Change.org regarding afterschool funding, something Living Histories is very concerned about seeing continue. We've seen first hand the impact that out of school programming makes in the lives of the youth whom participate in it.

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Urge Congress to Increase Funding for Afterschool Programs

To: Members of the U.S. Senate and Members of the U.S. House of Representatives

Started by: Josh Kramer


Rising fuel costs have already strained school budgets to the breaking point, with some even switching to four-day weeks. Yet with the economy weakening and deficits ballooning, Congress may cut funding to critical afterschool programs at a time when federal support is most needed.

Study after study shows that afterschool programs work. Participating students are less likely to be involved in crime or use drugs or alcohol. They improve their grades, attend school more regularly, are more likely to stay in school, and do better in college.

Currently, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers is under review. This is the only federal money solely dedicated to helping low-income communities establish high quality afterschool programs. More than 1.6 million children depend on 21st CCLCs. But 14 million more children throughout the country must take care of themselves after the school day ends, including almost four million students in middle-school and over 40,000 kindergartners.

Please urge Congress to increase funding for the 21st CCLC Program. Our children deserve a chance for a better future.

Sign the petition and learn more here.

Aboriginal Art

This is one of my favorite lessons - and perfect for the 'narrative/story telling' curriculum we are working with right now.

We introduced students to the idea of Aboriginal art last week - explaining where it came from, about indigenous people, comparison/contrast to Egyptian hieroglyphs they learned about last week, about how symbols and the need to tell the story of one's origins and land is universal. Using Aboriginal art as our platform is a GREAT place to teach all of these concepts, ultimately driving home the idea that what you choose to include and NOT to include in your story is critical. Plus, we'll work in a cool service project this week - probably letter writing or some sort of activism around indigenous rights.



In explaining Aboriginal art and culture, we emphasize three key concepts with the students: that much Aboriginal art is about the land and 'origin stories' about people and animals, that it relies heavily on symbols, and we talk about why the Aborigines used 'dots' when painting so frequently, among the many theories being that it was to show perspective and the scope and scale of the land itself.



For our first project, students choose an animal that would represent them - we asked them to be able to identify specific characteristics in that animal that they saw in themselves (and, in fact, we'll do a writing activity on that this week...) and they then drew that animal and painted it in using the 'dot' style of Aborigines - we had them use Q-tips, which worked really well.





This week they'll be doing a piece inspired by Aboriginal work that shows their own 'origin story' - how they ended up where they are today. It should turn out pretty cool - the students really like the project...

Symbols/heiroglyphs

Last week we rolled out our new curriculum for the spring semester, ‘Story Telling’. During the course of the next twenty weeks, our students will be learning about narratives: how and why people tell stories, why our personal stories are all important, and how stories can be a vehicle for social change. They’ll be looking at ancient forms of story telling, and means by which various cultures have recorded their own and their collaborative stories over time, etc. Then, towards the second half of the semester, they will be using photography, writing, and hopefully even video to record their own stories, and stories throughout their community, with the goal of producing a piece (a book, perhaps, or photo essays – we haven’t decided just yet!) that they can share with students around the world doing similar projects. We are very excited to get this going!



To get rolling, we spend this week talking about stories themselves, the how and why, and also looked at hieroglyphs and how symbols are used in storytelling. This is always a popular lesson – explaining how a flag is symbol, and how the ‘golden arch’ is a symbol of McDonalds always seems to do the trick. From there, students create their own symbols, and then as a group create a piece that describes either their day, or a made up story, using symbols – in particular this project is great for fostering group efforts and a sense of community amongst the students.



Next we’ll be looking at Aboriginal art, something we touched on last year that the kids really enjoyed.