hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all...
-Emily Dickinson

The second grade artists thought of this poem and the bird metaphor as they created a clay bird on which to place their own hopes! Above is a bird shaped collection of their hopes. I also did this project with my fifth grade advisory at the beginning of the year as a place to put their academic and personal hopes for the year. Something about stamping each letter of their hope into the clay really helps to strengthen the concept for them.



I was inspired to do this project after seeing Kristin Love's beautiful Poetry Birds. The second graders really responded to her use of texture and fluid shape.


I love the way Andrew creatively stamped in his name and his hope for more art in the world!








Hope for strong friendships.


Hope for quiet- from his sister:)


His original hope was to discover that dinosaurs really do still exist. After considering the space constraints, he shortened it to find.




I am always asking them to be brave artists so I was pleased to see some hopes to be brave!




Aashna was proud to share with us that her name means hope.

second grade full moon rattles

May is the Flower Moon

Can you guess how the second grade artists made these ceramic rattles? They used a special technique using two pinch pots to make a round rattle inspired by the full moon. We read some full moon poems from the book, When The Moon Is Full by Mary Azarian. The titles of the poems are from Native American names for each full moon. The second grade artists chose a poem to inspire their own full moon rattle design.


June is the Strawberry Moon

Each rattle has a unique sound depending on the size and number of beads inside. Lisa's second grade class worked with our amazing perfoming arts specialist, Ben Griffiths, to record these unique sounds using garageband (how cool is that?!). Originally, we had just wanted to make a recording of the rattles but our very creative students thought it would be even better to include the poems too!
Listen to all of their beautiful work here.


February is the Snow Moon


October is the Hunter’s Moon


August is the Green Corn Moon


January is the Wolf Moon


July is the Buck Moon


December is the Long Night Moon


March is the Sap Moon


April is the Frog Moon

We finished this project a couple of months ago to coincide with this rare cosmic event. We'll have to wait until the year 2094 to see that happen again but you can always see the next full moon on March 19th!

second grade fireworks

We had a lovely time at our neighborhood 4th of July celebration last night and it reminded me of a fireworks inspired project from our second grade artists earlier in the year.



We took a look at the art of Cai Guo-Qiang, a contemporary artist from China. His signature art is based on “explosion events” that use gun powder as a drawing tool. The second graders observed that he is interested in things that are both beautiful and ugly/dangerous at the same time.



Cai is the artist that choreographed the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony fireworks show. His art inspired the second grade artists to make their own fireworks using the design elements of line and color. They made a mark of their choice and then repeated it concentrically while overlapping designs. I always enjoy watching them approach this algorithm in their own unique way. Enjoy the fireworks!

second grade texture tiles

The second grade artists spent some lovely spring mornings outside exploring textures. They used their naturalist and spatial intelligences to find natural objects that would make an interesting texture to print in the wet clay. They made two tiles each, one with an imprinted texture from a natural object and one built up texture inspired by nature. The clay pieces were kiln fired and then a special glazing technique was used to make the textures really stand out.

These are beautiful tokens of texture that will always remind us of our school garden.

second grade NOTAN

NOTAN
Light and dark at play
Japanese design concept
Balance, shape, and space