Technobable

Recently, I went on a vacation to Aruba.  It was exactly as you might imagine Aruba to be;  warm beached, crystal clear waters, friendly people and rum-based frozen drinks.  Essentially, it's paradise, and for anyone looking to get away, I totally recommend it.

Except for one thing.

I had no wifi.  We were far, far FAR away from home, and other than at my hotel, I could not access the internet.  And the price of texts or phone conversations was at a premium, keeping communication to a minimum.  Initially, I wanted to embrace this detachment from technology, and welcome the silence that resulted from a useless rectangle of plastic and computer parts that once was my phone.  But it soon became achingly clear how much I relied on instant access to information, and how lost I was without it.  I found myself asking questions like "how will I know where to meet you? (texting)", "how do I know if that restaurant is good?(yelp/tripadvisor)", "how do I know where to go? (google maps)".  My daily experiences are all in some way affected by or benefit from my tether to technology, and I actually felt isolated without this connection.

What's interesting is that I haven't been connected for that long.

I was born in 1984, so I consider myself to be part of what I like to call the "intronet" generation.  Those of us who grew up during the late 80s and early 90's experienced a transitional period before the internet became the all-powerful driving force it is today.  It was a very interesting decade to experience, and I'm grateful to have a clear memory of rotary phones and land lines as much as I do of Juno and AOL.  I realize that older generations experienced this transition as well, but I think the younger you are, the more open you are to change.  And the intronets were all about it.  We had grown up with limited communication, and we were excited and enthralled by instant messaging and email correspondences.  We couldn't believe that we could talk to our friends through computers.  We were constantly wide-eyed and amazed by every new development, and so much of it happened so quickly that we were forced to adapt and grow along with the technology.  We learned a whole lot in a very short period of time.  

And sometimes I wonder if we have forgotten where we came from, and how lucky we are to have access to the whole world whenever we want it.  We are so fortunate to be able to experience so much, and it has become a kind of access that we take for granted.  Just remember when, people, just remember when...

The day I returned home from Aruba, I remember turning on my phone after exiting the plane.  I saw three bars.  I had wifi.  I felt instantly relieved and comforted.  And then, for just a moment, I realized how strange these feelings were.  How could so much of my life be connected to something so small?  At what moment had this change occurred?  Was it necessarily negative to want instant contact?  I think it's easy for people to say that we are "too reliant on technology".  In many ways, it's true.  But maybe it's not a bad thing.  Maybe all that it represents is a basic human need to be connected to those around us, and a desire to be a part of something larger than ourselves.  There are so many wonderful experiences that come from this connection, and so many opportunities that might not be possible without the ability to access and share information instantly.  If anything, during those "no service" moments, we need to let go of resentment and frustration, and simply be thankful for all that we are able to do.  There was a time, not so long ago, when none of this was possible.

Animal Collages

This is the first example my two-year-olds created.

  

I don't think I know a single preschool teacher who doesn't adore Eric Carle.  His wonderful stories and colorful illustrations are a staple of my classroom and my lesson planning.  This past week, I decided to try out some animal collage ideas based (loosely) on Eric Carle's fabulous illustrations.  Some of my kids worked with a couple of layers, creating a backgrounds with paint, and then coloring their animal shape with craypas...

My one-year-olds worked with a pre-traced animal shape and collage paper.  Once they were finished decorating the paper, I cut the animal shapes out to create a clean edge...

...Preschool traced their own animal shapes and used a combination of collage elements and craypas.  They were encouraged to work on their cutting skills with teacher supervision...

And my class created their background with crayons, then designed their animals...

Pre-K had a more open-ended project.  They created their own animal shapes, and worked with decorated paper to develop a background.

Here's the whole thing on the ol' art wall.  I love how all of the different styles of work compliment each other, and I'm excited for more collage-based projects in the future!

My First Visual Journal

This is actually the first page; some kids couldn't wait...

 I have kept a journal for as long as I have been able to write, and within the past ten years I have started to keep visual journals as well.  It's incredibly satisfying to have an ongoing personal record, and visual journals are a fantastic creative outlet/brainstorming vehicle.  Recently, I decided to start a visual journal project with my Pre-School and Pre-K classes, and here's a look at our first session.  We started by taking ownership of our journals and customizing the front (and in some cases, back) cover.  I provided students with a variety of materials, such as colored pencils, markers, paint stampers, collage materials and stickers.  The project was completely open-ended:  these are their journals after all.  My kids were extremely focused, and their work turned out beautifully.  I'm thrilled they have taken such a liking to this project, and I'm looking forward to continuing to work on the journals until they are complete. 

I love this student's process; first, she used markers and paint stampers, then she collaged with tissue paper.  Beautiful transparencies.

This students sought out as many pieces of embossed foil paper as she could find in the bag-o-scraps.  She also did some very nice layering with the metallic paint stampers.

This one is very Lisa Frank..

This student thought outside the box and collaged off of the border of the page...

An awesome metallic mosaic!

This one is magical...

This was the first page of my journal.  The kids asked me to draw a monster, but they said this looked too much like an alligator.  Tough crowd!

 

 

 

 

Holiday Crafting

 

 

Just a few things my kids did this week for the holiday season.  This week, we focused specifically on Hanukkah, and although the crafting options are limited with my 18-24 months, I think we did a pretty good job.  First, we created these Star of Davids using tissue paper and fancy foil paper I found and Artists and Crafstman Supply.  I gave each child a bunch of blue tissue paper squares to work with and allowed them to arrange the squares however they wanted on the page.  I cut the stars out ahead of time, and once the tissue paper part was complete, I framed the work with the pre-cut star shape.  They turned out beautifully, and I'm including a latke recipe for the parents inside the card...

                                                                                                               


 ...This is definitely not an original idea, but still a wonderful project.  I'm pretty sure you can do anything with paper plates or toilet paper rolls, seriously.  This is pretty straight-forward:  I halved 2 sizes of paper plates and glued the pieces together, then I let my kids decorate their menorah  with metallic paint stampers and tissue paper.  After they were finished, we used Popsicle sticks and glitter to create candles.  I didn't think about this at the time, but you could make the Sham ash (the candle used to light the other candles) a different color.

 Also, this is the starting point for our winter wall mural.  On the first day, it was just the snowman, all by his lonesome, but my kids made some very lovely evergreens to keep him company...

...As you can tell, I'm on a serious tissue paper kick.  I cut out trees for the kids to decorate, and all gave them some shiny star stickers to work with.  Some of my younger kids needed a little assistance as their fine motor skills are not quite developed, but they worked very hard and did a great job...

 ...I think my favorite little detail from the mural are the twinkle lights.  I traced a whole bunch of light bulb templates on one side of large pieces of tag board, and let my kids finger paint on the other side.  I stuck to primarily holiday colors, a lot of red, green, and yellow, although I tried to keep green and red separate so that I wouldn't end up with brown.  I did the same thing in order to create fall leaves earlier this year.


That's all for now.  More to come...

Speaking of Variations...

Since I'm on this no-mess, throw-it-in-a-sealed-container-with-paint-and-shake-it kick, I thought I'd try it out with these pine cones...

We all love glitter...sure we do, but it does have a tendency to get everywhere and never ever go away.  So I figured I would try to keep the glitter factor a bit more contained.

 I just rolled the pine cones in a good coating of glue...

...and tossed some glitter in a large yogurt container and let my kids do the rest.  This was a great solution to glitter woes, and the finished product was gorgeous.  

Prints and Pollocks

 It's seriously been a while since I've updated, even though I have a ton of pictures waiting to be posted and lots of projects to talk about.  These two projects were really fun and complimented each other well, so I thought I'd throw them into one post...

 

My toddler classes worked on these mini Pollock paintings (R) using the tried and true marble painting technique.  We used a variety of objects, including beads and seashells, and got a ton of different effects.  The kids loved the concept of making lots of noise while creating artwork.  Preschool and Pre-K worked on these fabulous aluminum foil prints (L), and they absolutely adored this project.  A lot of the kids wanted to do multiple prints, so I let them try all kinds of color combinations and paint thicknesses.  The example above is one of my favorites...

...Here's a few more examples of these projects...

 ...I also used the same marble painting technique to make these paper chain strips.  I threw a little glitter in the mix as well.  I love that they look like sparkly bacon strips..









The work looked wonderful when it was displayed together on the art wall, and I was really excited to try all kinds of variations.  Give these projects a try!

New Paintings

I've finally started to make some headway on the paintings for Chhaya, and here is a look at some of the stuff I've been working on:

This one is 36"x48", although my seriously lousy smartphone camera does not do the best job of capturing detail...

Here's a detail of part of the city on the horizon line.  There is a long-standing tradition of miniature painting in India, and I'm interested in creating some small-scale pieces as well.  

Detail of Dog-thing.  Not sure exactly what this creature is, but I think it's a dog...

Detail of moth and moon.

This is the second painting(R); it measures 30"x40".  And here's a detail of the patterns in the background(L).  I've just started another layer of these patterns, so they'll be more pics to come...

Here's a couple more sketches as well, both pen and ink.  I plan to have a few clusters of smaller pieces throughout the show, and perhaps some prints available of the drawings as well.

 That's about it for now, but I should have another post coming up soon about some Fall and Halloween projects I did with my kids.