We had a fabulous time all week at my Paris-themed art and cooking camp. On the last day, we wrapped up our sculpture project and made yummy chocolate fondue.
A couple of campers wanted to make animal sculptures. They used foil and plaster or white Sculpey polymer clay to create their creatures. Not so Parisian, but I love how they turned out.
The recipe for chocolate fondue was the easiest of all our recipes this week: 8 oz. of chopped semi-sweet chocolate heated with 1/3 cup of half-and-half. Pound cake cubes, whole strawberries and sliced banana tasted delicious dipped in the warm chocolate.
So much fun!
I just signed up for a free online class presented by the Museum of Modern Art in NYC!
Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom
taught by Lisa Mazzola
Explore how to integrate works of art into your classroom with inquiry-based teaching methods originally developed for in-gallery museum education.
About the Course
Intended for teachers (Grades 4-12) from all disciplines, this course will introduce ways to integrate works of art into your classroom by using inquiry-based teaching methods commonly used in museum settings. This course is designed to give teachers the tools to create meaningful object-based learning activities that can be integrated into a wide variety of curricula. We’ll explore strategies that emphasize literacy, critical thinking skills and that connect across disciplines. The strategies and content that you will learn in this course parallels the proficiencies outlined in the Common Core State Standards as they relate to literacy, speaking and listening, critical thinking, analyzing informational text, and citing evidence to support arguments.
Four week course, begins 7/29/13 3/3/14. Workload: 1-2 hours/week
Course is offered through Coursera. Click here to find out more.
Check out their intro video:
This is my first MOOC (massive open online class). I’m excited to learn!
One student made a pointillist cake! She lightly sketched her design in pencil, then filled in with dots of watercolor and marker. When it was dry, she erased the pencil lines.
We made a cherry clafoutis – a lovely French summer dessert with a texture that is a cross between a cake and a custard. CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE. Surprise – the kids LOVED pitting fresh cherries!
Coming up later this week: the last day of art and cooking camp. Chocolate fondue and the completed Degas sculptures!
I just finished my Paris-themed art and cooking camp. The kids loved to make these printed Eiffel Towers. The project is inspired by this fabulous post at the Cassie Stephens blog (please check out the post – it has excellent directions!).
We used white craft paint and 1″x2″ pieces of mat board to print our Eiffel Towers. When dry, we added detail with chalk pastels and hand-made stencils. Finally we added pastel fireworks outlined with glue and glitter. Some kids stuck on gummed stars to make the Parisian night sparkle.
The kids loved this brief video of fireworks at the Eiffel Tower.
In my one week Paris-themed art + cooking camp, we made crepes, meringues and madeleines! Click here, here and here to see our other art and food projects (with recipes).
Today was Day Three of my Paris-themed art and cooking camp. We began by making meringues and ended by beginning our Degas-inspired sculptures.
Meringues:
Meringues are really fun to make. CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE (AND VIDEO!). We had lots of practice separating eggs. Then we whipped those egg whites and sugar up, up, up into glossy peaks, and piped them onto the baking sheets using a pastry bag and a star tip. The kids had a lot of fun making ‘custom’ giant and mini meringues, and trying to make letter-shaped meringues.
Unfortunately, meringues take forever to bake – at least two hours at 200 degrees F. Then they have to cool. So we won’t taste the completed meringues until tomorrow. Not the best choice for a three-hour AM camp. It was humid today – another meringue no-no. Oh well, at least we didn’t bake them on the last day of camp.
Degas-inspired Sculpture:
We talked about Degas. Degas was a French artist who is famous for creating snapshot-like pastel artworks of racehorses and ballet dancers. Unlike the other Impressionists, he did not focus on the quality of light, and created his work indoors (Actually, Degas did not consider himself an Impressionist). After his eyesight started to fail, he switched to sculpture. He initially sculpted his famous ‘Little Dancer Age 14’ in wax on a wire armature; it was later cast in bronze.
We created wire and foil armatures and covered them in plaster wrap. Some kids are creating dancers and some are creating animals. This took about an hour.
Tomorrow we will make cherry clafouti and finish up our sculptures.
Enjoy (and bon appetit!)
Do you like to cook? Have you taught anyone to cook?
