Category Archives: This and That

Free MoMA Online Class – Great for Art Teachers

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UPDATE: THIS CLASS WILL BEGIN MARCH 3, 2014

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!

Enjoy!

 

Art + Cooking Camp: Cherry Cake and Pointillism

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Bonjour! Here is an update on Day Four of my Paris-themed art and cooking camp. Today we tried out pointillism and made cherry clafoutis.

Pointillism

Pointillism is lots of fun for kids. They love the idea of creating art from dots of paint. We looked at pointillist artworks under extreme zoom at Google Art Project. Click here to see the extreme close up of Seurat’s ‘The Circus’ and click here to see Signac’s ‘The Port of St. Tropez’. For the art project, we did this fun Signac lesson with coloring sheet from the Practical Pages blog. The kids dotted their sheets using damp Q-Tips and pan watercolors. They filled in the tiniest areas with dots of colored marker.

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.

(note: if you are looking for a whole class pointillism assignment, check out this Seurat mural project).

Cherry Clafoutis

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!

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Coming up later this week: the last day of art and cooking camp. Chocolate fondue and the completed Degas sculptures!

Art + Cooking camp:

Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Enjoy!

 

 

Art + Cooking Camp: Meringues and Degas

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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.

making 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.

 

degas sculpture art campTomorrow 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?

Art + Cooking Camp: Madeleines and the Eiffel Tower

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Today was Day Two of my Paris-themed art and cooking camp. We made lemon madeleines and began a ‘Printed Paris’ Eiffel Tower project.

Madeleines

Our lemon madeleines were delicious. CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE. I bought my own silicone madeleine pan for this project. It worked perfectly – all the little cakes popped right out intact. The recipe made a lot of madeleines – we put the extra batter in cupcake papers and baked them up as little muffins. The kids doused them in powdered sugar. Really fun cooking project!

Separating eggs.

Separating eggs.

We used silicone madeleine molds.

We used silicone madeleine pans.

The little cakes popped out perfectly. Yum!

The little cakes popped out perfectly. Yum!

Printed Eiffel Towers

We started our printed Eiffel Towers.  The project was inspired by this fabulous post at the Cassie Stephens blog.

We used mat board scraps and white paint to print the Eiffel Tower.

We used mat board scraps and white paint to print the Eiffel Tower.

Tomorrow we will finish up the Eiffel Towers, make meringues, and start on our Degas project.

Enjoy!

 

Are you teaching art this summer?

Art + Cooking Camp: Crepes and Monet

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What fun!  I just finished Day One of my Paris-themed art and cooking camp.  Today we made Banana-Nutella crepes on a real Parisian crepe griddle. We ended the morning with Impressionistic ‘mini-Monets’, created with chalk pastels and Shrinky Dinks shrinkable plastic.

Crepes

We started out by watching a YouTube video of a real Parisian crepe vendor. Then we mixed up the batter, all the while talking about how to measure out and combine the ingredients. CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE! I swear by my CucinaPro electric Crepe Maker for that real Parisian street food experience (note: compensated affiliate link).

Reyna tries her hand at crepe-making

R. tries her hand at crepe-making

Smile!

Smile!

‘Mini-Monets’

The ‘mini-Monet’ lesson from Blick is really fun and successful. You tape frosted Shrinky Dinks over an Impressionistic artwork, then trace over the brushwork using short strokes of chalk pastel. Shrink in a toaster oven and Voila!. We had 45 minutes for art – some kids made two pieces during that short time. Click here to see more examples.

Paige recreates Monet's haystacks in chalk pastel.

P. recreates Monet’s haystacks in chalk pastel.

Completed 'mini-Monets'. Not much taller than a quarter!

Completed ‘mini-Monets’. Not much taller than a quarter!

Tomorrow is Eiffel Tower day. Stay tuned for more photos later this week.

 

Enjoy!

(Note: this post contains compensated affiliate links)

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