1st Grade learning about SHAPE

1st grade always gets a lesson on shapes. Most GEOMETRIC shapes they know - square, triangle, circle, rectangle, oval, even trapezoid and paralellagram. And some even throw out hexigon, and octagon. BUT they become stumped when I ask them to name an ORGANIC shape. Well, that's because you can't!!! Organic shapes are those that are free form. Sometimes they occur over and over again, sometimes they only occur once. For example, the shape of spilled milk on the floor would be undescribable, therefore it would be ORGANIC. That exact shape would more than likely never happen again. The shape of an oak leaf is organic, and occurs over and over again on the tree.

In these collages, the students had to tear ORGANIC SHAPES out to paper to form clouds, hills, grass, tops of trees, etc. Then they used GEOMETRIC SHAPES to build their houses, buildings, all those things that "named" shapes can create. As you can see, we really ended up with some fabulous collages.

Of course, we continued to learn how to glue and cut as well.

ILLUMINATED INITIALS

Some of our Third Grade students have been learning about ILLITERACY. At least that, which abounded in the Middle Ages and earlier. We learned that during that time period, most people could NOT read and write. Mainly those who were wealthy and the priests of the churchs could read. There were very few books to be had, and those were HAND COPIED by scribes and monks. Can you imagine having to rewrite a whole book by hand? That is why they were called MANUSCRIPS (meaning written by hand). The scribes would elaborately decorate the pages and illustrations, as well as the first letter of each paragraph or page. Most of the time, they would use GOLD paint which, when hit by the flicker of candlelight, would light up......thus called ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPS.

This project focused on one of the students initials, which they designed, painted gold, and then decorated with personal symbols or pictures that reflected something about them. We used paint and markers for embellishments and details.

Then students chose a piece of wallpaper on which to glue their initial. THEN they glued that onto a black sheet of construction paper, decorating those edges with metallic pencils.

These turned out to be BEAUTIFUL and ILLUMINATING!

2nd Grade Warm/Cool drawings

Many of the 2nd grade classes are working on understanding WARM and COOL analogous color groups. We are also talking about EMPHASIS. So we created a picture where students EMPHASISED a certain area by grouping colors into warm and cool colors. Can you tell where they want you to look first?