Friday, October 26, 2012

The Class Pumpkin Patch

So, I really meant to bring/find in order to bring my camera to school, but it didn't happen. Again. Anyway, the students LOVED making these! So much so that yesterday, they requested that it be available during Fun Friday! That's huge! Of course I made that happen :)

We used construction paper to make ours. The ever amazing copy aide cut all of the strips for us! She's awesome!!

During the first class, 3rd grade, I showed the students how to lay out the strips for gluing, but didn't show them how to glue. Most of them were able to manage without being shown, but a significant number of students would've been less frustrated with the process if I had shown them exactly what to do.

Arming myself with the knowledge gleaned from the first class, I showed the next class a full tutorial. Viola! They were super successful! Some of them even made 3 or four pumpkins in the time it took the last class to make one pumpkin! Amazing!

Want to know the secret? A very, very small amount of glue! Just a small dot and then squeeze the segments together. If there's too much glue, then the paper can't absorb it and the paper slips instead of sticks.

A few students also discovered, somewhat accidentally, that if the strips of paper are laid across each other instead of end-to-end, the pumpkin turns out much smaller and SUPER cute! After the first happy accident, I actually told the rest of my students that they had two options instead of the one I originally planned :)

After making the main pumpkin by gluing the strips of paper directly to the ends of the other papers (no circle as in the picture although that would've been cute), we added a brown stem folded and glued as shown and some students also added a little, green pumpkin leaf. I found the image of a pumpkin leaf via a JoAnn Fabrics pumpkin table runner tutorial (forgot the link, sorry!) that I made into card stock template.

Here's a picture of one of the inspiration pumpkins and the link to her blog:

Perhaps Tuesday, I will remember my camera and we will make ghosts and pumpkins once again.
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Creativity Journal

Creativity: to create something novel and appropriate to the situation (see post: "What is Creativity," December 11, 2009)*

1. Create something out of the word simcha (joy/happiness/festivities/celebrations/etc)

2. Finish my chairs (See post, "Update: My Chairs")

3. Pottery

4. Start a children's Art class

5. Teach Art at a Women's Correctional Facility

6. Come up with assignments for the American Arts packet

7. Change the assignments in the Drama Costuming packet - the students will create 4-5 female and male costumes from the 11 time periods included in the packet, plus the final instead of only writing (copying and pasting) info about each time period.

8. Create a book exchange/book club for illiteracy/aliteracy

9. Learn Art in a foreign country

10. Write a book

11. Start a children's magazine for children by children and publish it on the web.

12. Create trees and hands (not necessarily together, but maybe?)

13. Blog book - only novel in the sense that it's my own writing!

14. Create a chess set (even though I don't personally play chess, lol!)

15. S'mores with a twist

16. 3D art - I admire other forms of art, but I personally only truly enjoy the physicallity and manipulative quality of 3D art. There's something truly living in 3D art that I miss in 2D art.

17. Sign language hands (alphabet/words)

18. Hands of twisted metal coils

19. use different types of materials to create imprints in clay (wire mesh)

20. A shelf/centerpiece holder (a couple of bricks on the bottom, long, thin wood, 12" width laying on top, block (thicker than the bricks on the bottom - 6"?) in middle, and a short piece of wood on the very top).

21. vase (fill baggie with rice and seal the bag, wheel thrown then carefully squish).

22. 3D collage out of meaningful paper.

23. Babushka doll style vase with side cutout (possibly put a piece of glass in the side opening)

24. Babushka dolls - make smallest one first, with side opening and something inside(?), then the next biggest - place small one inside next biggest when done with the bottom of it and secure the two together. Continue this process with side openings in each so that you can see all the way through to the inside "jem" in the smallest one!

25. atlas - split into pieces and reassemble into something new - mobile? encase each piece in between glass sheets, hang as a put together puzzle.

26. paper dolls & scenery out of different types of paper, paintings, collages, maps, etc.

27. A storm cloud with a silvery lining (mobile?) ceramic/paper mache

28. "baby ducklings" for each child, somehow uniquely different somehow, name and date of birth.

29. "stained glass" with veggies/fruits & other natural things. Lacquered and soldered.

30. Men's dress shirts with faux cuff links printed onto the cuffs or fancy/fun buttons to replace the buttons on a standard dress shirt. button clips? a button cover-up to go over existing buttons without changing the button itself.

31. A pottery wheel bat that has form attachments in order to create smooth indentations in the "bottom" of the piece being thrown.

32. "Quilt" of the six-day-Christian-creation-period.

33. A dollhouse book for paper dolls! such a cool idea!!

34. print your own fabric using a large "rolling pin" stamp?

35. Cloth nesting dolls

36. map topography - cut out all of the countries and continents and islands, layer then largest to smallest hang them slightly apart. From an actual map? or traced out onto something else?

*Please be creative and use your own ideas and not mine. Although if you are inspired by my ideas and the inspiration and not the idea itself is used, then by all means, use the inspiration!!

About Me

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I love visiting with family and friends, reading, teaching, art, and day dreaming about world travel, especially going to Ireland someday. In 2009, I earned a MAED in Elementary Education. In addition, I completed both the Reading and Elementary Math Endorsements during the 2013-2014 school year. Currently, I teach first grade and love it!

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