What is In Your Heart?

What Is In Your Heart?

This was such a fun project, especially coming right off of Valentines Day! An artist friend of ours, Petra Eiko, was involved in creating a wonderful art exhibit called “What is In Your Heart” that is currently on exhibit in Santa Monica. Visitors to the shop/gallery were asked to answer this question via drawing and writing, and to ‘post’ their answers in the gallery space.

I helped filmed the opening reception of this project for Petra, and was so inspired by what I saw that I decided to have our Living Histories students participate as well. Without much prompting beyond a basic explanation, they were asked to answer the question of ‘what is in your heart?’; their answers, as you can see below, are quite insightful, touching, and funny.

The project, as a side note, was also a great teaching tool for the difference between ‘literal’ and ‘figurative’ and we’ll be using it as an introduction to our poetry writing this week.

Check them out:







































*Note, this particular artist is currently in love with a very handsome 1st grader named Kai.





*Note, this particular artist is currently a little bit obsessed with dolphins.

Abstract designs

We've been working on abstract designs inspired by Alexander Calder. We looked at Calder's work while making our ecosystem mobiles last month, and now we are looking at his paintings. This is a great introduction for drawing and color theory; students are creating abstract designs inspired by shapes found in nature (building on what we've been doing with our gardens and ecosystem lessons), then painting them in primary colors. They loooove the project!

Gardens are still growing!

Transplanting, watering and lots of looking...our seeds are still growing, and everyone is anxious for spring and to start planting outside!

I love how excited the students are about our plants - looking for signs of growth is one of the first things they do now when they come to class!

Ecosystems

We've been at working making 'ecosystem mobiles' the last few weeks. We'd been talking a lot about ecosystems in recent weeks, looking at what ecosystems having common with 'community', a key concept in our program, and also how the gardens we are growing are part of larger ecosystems.

Students then created their own mini ecosystem mobiles. After looking at the work of Alexander Calder, and thinking about how like an ecosystem, a mobile is a type of art where the pieces interact with each other, students got to work, creating a version of an ecosystem of their choosing: lots of oceans, but also some forests, rainforests, swamps, deserts, jungles, farms, gardens and even a pond!

Happy MLK Day

"You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love..."
-MLK


Drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. done by one of our Kinder students in his journal last week!

Seeds are growing!

We were really excited to get back to school after winter break; new projects await, and a chance to check our seeds we planted before we went on vacation.

As we expected, they sprouted over the break - students were very impressed with the results! Spinach and corn seemed to grow the most in the 'mini greenhouses' we made out of plastic bags in the windows, but nearly all of the seeds showed signs of growth. Next step is to move the seedlings into small cups to live in the windowsills for the next month or so before we plant them outside in the ground.

I also had students fill out an 'evaluation', basically a series of simple questions about our classes to give us feedback: what they like, don't like, do they look forward to the class, what other kinds of things do they want to learn, so on and so on. I was pleased to see how many of them wrote about the seed project and gardens, they really seem pumped on doing the gardens this spring.


3rd graders Marco and Kristina check out how much their seeds grew over winter break!

We also started our 'ecosystems' project. Students are learning about ecosystems - what they are, different types of ecosystems, etc. They will then connect this knowledge to their own gardens they will created this spring - investigating their ecosystem, trouble shooting problems, learning about how interrelated things in nature are - as well as what they have already learned about 'communities', and the similarities between ecosystems and communities, a connection they have already picked up on.

For our first 'ecosystem art project' they are making mobiles of an ecosystem they will choose and research - we are also learning about the work of Alexander Calder and other mobile artists. They seem pretty excited about it - more updates on it as we progress!