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!