Pond Waiting for Water Lilies by Cannon 10/21/12
                                                                
October 28 2012
Art Making
This morning we unpacked my trolley and started by looking at excerpts from a documentary about Gerhard Richter the contemporary German artist whose artistic career has been likened to Pablo Picasso’s.  His work goes from super realism to a more abstract expressionism. He works with many mediums and materials. Cannon and I looked at his abstract compositions. In the documentary we watched him using giant - large (1-5 foot long) palette “knives” or squeegees to move paint on large canvasses. We decided to experiment with Richter’s method of layering colors and moving paint on a surface with large flat edged tools. We used approx 12”x24”– 130lb watercolor paper.

The Process

1. Cannon helped spray the paper with water before adding a base color. Cannon chose two colors from the four that were offered – red, yellow, blue and purple – plus white. By using just two colors Cannon got a feel for color mixing and for making tints by adding white to colors.

2. The acrylic paints come in large tubes so Cannon put his hand over mine and directed my hand to the area he wanted the paint on and then helped squeeze the paint onto the paper.

3. Then he selected one of the painting tools available for this experiment. (We soon discovered which tools were most effective and easiest to grip and manipulate.)

4.  He got a good grip on the handle and then pulled the tool across the surface of the paper – pulling water and color across. 

5.  Cannon pulled the tools across from right to left and down from top to bottom. He changed tools and we added paint at his direction. 

6.  We took 10-15 min breaks between layers to allow the paint to dry so the under layers would show through and not just be mixed in with the new layer. 

 

 

Reflection

Cannon was very engaged in our painting activity.  Like Richter his “intention” grew as the painting developed.  He was very clear on his color choices and placement; guiding the paint tube to the place he wanted it and helping to squeeze paint out onto the paper. The acrylic tube paints worked well.   He really stretched his arm out to move the paint and made choices of painting tools.  He found the best way to grip the tool.  He needed my assistance to put pressure on the tool as he dragged it across the paper.  The pressure I put on the tool was close to where the tool and the paper made contact. This created some resistance which made him use his muscles more and assured the paint made contact with the paper.  He also knew when the painting was finished.    I am trying to be a facilitator, information source – idea stimulator.  I am conscious of offering minimal manual guidance so as to keep his work authentically his.  I was so pleased that Cannon used so many of his spoken words to tell me what he wanted while we were working. I am understanding more of Cannon's gestures, signs and vocal communications.  

Cleaning up – I sprayed Cannon's hands with water and he very effectively used the cloth rag to clean his hands of almost all of the dried acrylic.  The vinyl table covering worked well and let us both relax even more in our processes. The kitchen/dining spaces are working very well.  Thanks for making the space user friendly, I feel comfortable and am not overly concerned about “splashing”. 

 

 

 

Dolce Sight Words

During our paint drying breaks Cannon located and marked the sight words I called out and used in a sentence. We worked the first 50 words on cards 1and 2.  There were some inconsistencies in his responses so we will review this again next time. 

Decoding and word building – I demonstrated how letters are “sound pictures” using the example of how a simple picture of a house and mountains could have become the letters that symbolize/stand for the letter sounds of h and m. We started word building with the letters p-m-a-t-f-s-o-c

Frog and Toad – I read The Story from Frog and Toad Are Friends. I stopped several times and asked Cannon to find one of the sight words.
Writing our own story – we had fun building sentences on the magnetic board about A Fat Cat using some of the Dolce sight words and our decoded words.

A Fat Cat

by Cannon Hoops

The fat cat sat on a mat.

Pat the fat cat.

Prrr!

Tea Time – A friend gave me some fresh mint from her herb garden. The leaves had dried.  Cannon looked closely at the dried leaves with his super large magnifying glass.  Then he used his pinching fingers to pull the dried leaves off of the stem.  Mom helped us press the dried leaves into a tea ball.  We put the tea ball in a cup and poured hot water over it.  We let it steep until it became mint tea. We noticed that the dried leaves had "re-hydrated" soaked up the water and looked like fresh wet leaves. We had a tea tasting during one of the painting breaks. Cannon decided it was okay but not a favorite and one taste was enough.

It was a full Sunday morning. 

Monet! Making an Impression

Impressions of Monet's Water Lilies

October 21, 2012
Our first art lesson!  We experimented with wet and dry materials and used Monet's painting of water lilies as our inspiration. We saw two cityscapes by Monet at the IMA.  Claude Monet was interested in how light worked.  He knew that plain sunlight could be bent and "broken" into a rainbow of colors.  Scientists were studying light to understand how and why could be broken into different colors.

Artists in the late 1800's were interested in how to use this information to make art in new and different ways.  Since there were many new and easier ways of making photographs artists no longer needed to make "picture perfect" realistic paintings.  They were free to make paintings that could comunicate the exciting "impressions" of color and light.

Monet had a house and large garden in France.  In the garden there was a large pond. Many water lilies grew in the pond.  Monet painted scenes of the pond with water lilies many times.  All of the paintings were different because the "light" was different each day.  We looked at several of his paintings on the computer.

We experimented with dry Pan Pastels using different sizes and types of sponges and even a rubber ball to put the colors on the pastel paper. Then we worked on a larger paper to create our "impression" of Monet's painting of water lilies on a pond.

Then we got out the paints and experimented with a technique called "wet on wet" water color.  We sprayed the water color paper (very absorbant paper from India) and then added lots of water to the water color pallette.  Using a large watercolor brush we dropped and moved color around the paper. We also used bubble wrap to create textures and patterns. 

Dolce Words
We whized through the first 25 words on the Dolce word list.  It was clear these words were easily recognized and understood.  And then we met Frog and Toad and found these words in the text of the first chapter of Frog and Toad Together.  We used a ven diagram to compare and contrast frogs and toads to start to understand how they are different and how they are the same.

Taking a Closer Look!
We got out the giant magnifying glass and took a very close look at a large dried sunflower.  We could see how different it was from the fresh sunflowers we saw at the beginning of school. Each large sunflower is made up of lots of tiny individual flowers this makes it a composite flower.  Each little flower makes a seed.  We could see the geometric pattern of the seeds.  We took a seed out and broke it open to find the soft inside part.  That is the part that people like to eat.  We can tie the dry sunflower to a tree or fence and watch birds, squirrels and chipmunks come by to eat the seeds.

Introducing Frog and Toad



 

 



 

 

Frog and Toad will lead us to many adventures.  Like Toad we will have many questions to explore.  First we will learn how to decode the words in their stories.  But that is not all.  We will have our own questions and like Sherlock Holmes we will search for answers.  But be careful in finding answers we may find more questions.  Where will it end? 

Before we even  open the book what is the first question we may have? What is the difference between a frog and a toad? Get out your thinking cap and go to this site to find the answer.  http://www.kidzone.ws/lw/frogs/facts8.htm