We've Got the Beat - Dance Spectacular

What a couple of weeks it has been!  I was in crazy Art Show land for a couple of weeks, sorting, matting, e-mailing and preparing for art show.  Right before Art Show I agreed to do the backdrop for Dance Spectacular at one of my schools.  I almost didn't do it, but I loved the theme so much that I said yes. 

So right after Art Show I got busy on painting the backdrop for Dance Spectacular.  This year's theme was, "We've Got the Beat.  Flashback to the 80's" - so all the music was from the eighties.  

When planning the backdrop I knew I wanted to use neon colors -what is more 80's than neon?!?!  Then as I was googling '80's' pop culture Keith Haring showed up.  DUH!!!!  Keith Haring was literally ALL over the 80's.  Shirts, clothes, posters - anything that could be printed was printed with Keith Haring.  

I had my plan.  I had a graffiti style font I found on the internet, some Keith Haring pictures for inspiration -- off I went.  

I learned a valuable lessons while doing this backdrop.

Lesson 1:  Neon pain is EXPENSIVE

Lesson 2: You can't buy neon tempra or neon  acrylic paint  in stores. (well unless you want only 2 oz bottles).

Lesson 3: Spray paint saved the day.

I had originally planned to have the students help me paint this -but when it was clear that I would need to use spray paint, my plans changed.

All in all I love the way it turned out.  The kids loved it and it worked perfect for flashing back to the eighties!  

Truffula Trees - 5th Grade Production "Mystery of the Midnight Thief"

I haven't updated in a while - I apologize.  I had a post all ready to go and realized I don't have pictures of the project downloaded onto my computer yet!  Whoops!

Things have been busy with mid-winter break, snow days, and 5th grade production.  March is the craziest, busiest month EVER at our school.  Whew.  I will earn my Spring Break!

Well, with the 5th grade production almost on my doorstep I took some extra minutes today between classes to finish up the Truffula Trees for the Seuss scene in our show!

These turned out pretty great and are far steadier than I was expecting!

It's amazing what tomato cages, paper mache, water bottles, tissue paper and some square fencing can become!

Backside

"Movie" Posters - 4th Grade

The fourth graders at one of my buildings are creating their own fractured fairy tales in Drama class.  They took a fairy tale and altered it slightly to make a new story.  The students will be performing their creations in December and I thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if the students created movie posters to hang in the cafetorium during their show?"  So I took my idea to the drama teacher and she was really excited about the idea - so off to planning my lesson.

I created a slideshow with many kid friendly movies - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Goonies, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, the Emperor's New Groove, etc.  I asked the students to raise their hand when there was something they noticed that most of the movie posters had in common.  I gave them a round or two of watching the slideshow before I started to call on students.  I got great answers which I placed into two lists.  List one had things they would have to have on their poster and the other optional choices -- I did not label these lists just yet.  Students reported great observations - title, characters, background, dates, actor names, presented by, etc.

Once we had our lists I told the students that they have been working on something in another class that had a title, characters, a setting, and a date it would be presented to an audience -- sure enough the excitement in the room started to grow.  I then explained that they would be creating "movie posters" for their Fractured Fairy Tales.

For the first class each student was responsible for making a rough draft of a poster for their group - they could discuss titles and such next class.  So, each student created a version of their Fairy Tale on paper.

Next class I had the students get together in their Fairy Tale groups and discuss each other's rough drafts.  I gave examples of things I should hear, "I like the way you drew your letters, but I like this other title" or "I like where you placed the characters" or "I like your wolf and I like your pig" - After about 5 minutes of them discussing their work I handed out another piece of paper to be their 2nd rough draft.  I asked students to either re-draw or cut out pieces they liked from their papers and arrange them on their next draft.

The 3rd class I handed out their Final Draft paper - poster size.  The students then had to re-create their 2nd rough draft onto their final paper.

The classes worked really well together and I only had to help a couple of groups work through some issues -- mostly based on how they were talking to each other.  After helping them through their issues they were off and running!

A few classes later when I was talking with the Drama teacher about the project she mentioned that she wanted them to do backgrounds that we could project behind them while they were presenting.  I offered to have them do it in art!  The technical theatre person in me was so excited!

The following class I had the groups split up their teams - some students worked on their poster while the remaining people in the group worked on different backgrounds for their story.  Most groups are ending up with 2-5 background scenes!

The students are drawing their backgrounds with pencil, coloring with oil pastel and watercoloring overtop.  The depth of color in these are beautiful!  When they are complete I will be making a slide show of their backgrounds by taking pictures and entering them into the computer.  During their show we will sit with the script and as they change scenes I will be able to go to the next slide!



I am super excited for these shows and will post an update on how everything turns out!