Collaborative Circles

The students at St. Luke's and I have been working on an art project I call "Collaborative Circles." I started by giving each student a square piece of paper with a quarter of a circle drawn in it.

For the younger students--Grade 1st through 3rd---I next had them color their square with crayons.When they finished, I assembled the quarter circles into one big circle....

The young students were quite surprised and excited when they saw how their drawing could make a "collaborative" bigger art piece. We then talked about what the word collaboration meant and how it felt to collaborate with a fellow classmate.

 

With grade 4th through 6th, I wanted to do something a bit more complicated. I handed out the quarter circles, and drew some patterns on the board. I told them I wanted them to draw similar patterns on their quarter circles, and showed them an example I had created. I first had the students draw their designs in pencil, then trace over the pencil with a black permanent marker.

then the students used colored pencils to color their designs

When we assembled the quarter circles into larger complete circles the results were quite wonderful! Again we discussed the word "collaboration" and how it felt to collaborate with fellow students. We also talked about how we all sometimes collaborated with people in other areas of our lives, and the advantages and disadvantages to collaborating.

The older students also were quite amazed by how their individual drawing changed when it was assembled into a larger drawing....and were quite pleased with their collaborative results.

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Chapter 2 of my "Charmed Caribbean Life"

the Caribbean is so picturesque I seem to snap many photos so I have created another Caribbean slide show for you to enjoy....

Another free photo slideshow by Smilebox

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Just a few Fun things Peace Corps Volunteers do in Their "Time Off"

here are just few activities Peace Corps volunteers on Dominica Island enjoy when we are not working....

snorkeling

walking....and hiking....

visiting  Peace Corps friends on nearby Islands....

hanging out at the favorite French cafe at the beach....

knitting with another Peace Corps volunteer at the beach....

playing rummicube...

reading or sleeping at the beach....

writing letters home....

joining a Carnival Band....

making paper carnival masks while drinking rum punch...

helping to create carnival costumes with local artisans...

jumping off cliffs into the ocean....

eating out together.....

soaking in one of the many hot springs...

visiting a remote beaches....

enjoying  Caribbean sunsets.....

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Creating Carnival Masks

A teacher at St. Luke's Primary suggested to me --with Carnival coming--why not have the students create some Carnival masks?? I had never made Carnival masks, but I got online and did some research, and then created a prototype with astrobright papers and a glue stick. Then for each paper piece in the mask I created a template for the students to trace around and cut out. I showed the students each step, and they got to cutting and gluing--we went through over 40 glue sticks and a whole ream of astrobright paper with around 160 students creating masks.

a finished mask...

cutting out the "petals"

last task--paint around the eyes, which made the eyes pop a little more

applying glue....

I love how they are came out differently even thought they all used the same templates....

after the masks were all glued I had them curl each petal (or feather?) around a pencil to give the petals a slight curl which added more definition to the mask...

all finished !

the mask looks pretty great when she wears it....

6ht graders with their masks

For the grades K through 3rd, we made simpler masks with triangles (I cut those) glued to paper plates. The little ones delighted in gluing the colorful triangle to the plates. I cut bright yellow shapes to go around the eyes....

gluing triangles onto partial paper plate....

finished masks....just need the ties...

we had a Carnival "Come As You Like Day"  ---where the kids came all dressed in whatever costume they wanted and some wore their masks...

this was a fun craft project for all of us....and the kids loved it!

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Paper weavings and Flowers!

Meanwhile, at the school the children and I have been creating paper weavings, and oil pastel resist flowers. Mostly the paper weaving have been small sized to make into greeting cards to eventually sell in the school's gift shop (which is still in the fundraising stage, but construction on gift shop to start soon!). One teacher asked if her children could make larger paper weavings to hang in their classroom so we also created some of those.

finished cards

First we sponge painted some bright cardstock scraps with bright colors, then wove solid colored paper into the painted paper, then mounted the weavings onto white cardstock.

a polka dot variation

Sometimes we used strips of painted paper and wove them into the solid colored paper--like the 2 on the right here. I showed the kids how to print dots on the weavings using a pencil eraser and these lovely stamp pads sent to me in a care package by my Bellingham friends Al, Kevin and family ! (thanks so much you all!!!)

printing the dots with a pencil eraser....

a finished larger paper weaving with printed dots

I gave this class each a large piece of colored paper and let them choose what colors to weave into it, and what color to print the dots with....

weaving....

--the results were paper weavings which were all unique and lovely!

The younger children have been creating flower paintings using first oil pastels to draw the flowers, then painting over the oil pastels with dark blue water based paint. The paint doesn't stick to the oil pastels which creates fun results that always makes the kids oooh! and awww!  when I first show them this technique.

painting the oil pastel flower drawing....

these were all done by kindergartners

 I sat down with the kinders and "taught" them how to draw a flower. First I had them draw a circle in the middle of their paper, then I asked them if they all knew how to draw the letter "U" ?  I then showed them how the flower petals were just the letter U drawn all around the circle and we proceeded from there..great results I think! We only had some pink paper to use for this so on some the pink shows through but I liked the results. I used this flower drawing lesson for all grades K-3, and we had some fun flower paintings.

one student came back after school and asked to do more of the oil pastel resist paintings so I gave her the crayons and she came up with this...

 

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