Saturday, October 20, 2012

Radial Symmetry

I love creating radial designs with my students.  This is a lesson that I saw awhile ago and always wanted to do with my students.   The Students created one section of their design using lines that connect to the sides of the shape and then traced them onto their remaining pieces.  I asked students to choose a color scheme for their designs.  We talked about warm and cool colors, primary and secondary colors, complementary colors and analogous colors.  While students were working on their designs we took turns using the Doodle Dandy app on the ipad.  This is a fun app that allows students to create all different kinds of radial designs.  You can change the pen size, color, and number of symmetry.  The kids loved it.  At the end of the lesson we used the ipads and the infuse learning website to review our knowlege of color schemes.  Infuse learning is an ipad student response system.  I love it because I can display an image onto my smartboard, ask my students questions and they can draw onto that image on the ipad to show me their understanding.  I projected a color wheel onto my smartboard and asked my students some questions like; circle the warm colors or put an X onto the primary colors.  The students had fun and I got to see what they learned about color.

 

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Pumpkin Paintings- Tempera and ipads


Second grade students were painting pumpkins.  We talked about how we could use value to make our pumpkins look more three-dimensional.  Students painted their pumpkins using light, medium and dark shades of orange.  We also talked about blending the colors together using our paintbrush.  I found a free painting app on the ipad called Hello Oil Painter.  The students were able to practice the same painting techniques on the ipad without the mess.  The app is really amazing.  It has a paint palette and you can virtually mix colors just like you would with real paint.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Sketchbooks




Fourth grade students just finished making their own sketchbooks and they came out great.  We tried a different type this year.  The students really enjoyed making them.  We will keep them in our class and use them throughout the year for sketching and free time drawings.  These are a great size to keep as a travel or summer journal too.