Pirate ship in a night storm

One of the pirate books that I read to the kids had some beautiful illustrations of a stormy sea so I decided we should tackle some "stormy" art work. I felt like this subject would give an opportunity to talk about line movement and low value color schemes that can reflect a feeling of roughness and then when the lines become softer it reflects a feeling of calm and peace. The ship pictures were done with oil pastels and we tried to capture what it looked like when the ship was in a night storm.

Haitian Houses

We learned about the economic struggle that Haiti has endured and talked about how many people still do not even have permanent housing and those that do often live in a very small house.  We had a space in the back of our room that was approximately the size of one of these houses and that help the students to be able to conceptualize just how small that space was.  I wanted to do a Haiti house project and just came up with an idea one day when kids were throwing away their milk cartons, to put 2 of those together to make one house.  We used paper mailing tape to join the boxes then we used Bordet to represent the metal roofs that the luckier home owners were able to have.  Next we got out lots of fun Caribbean colors and just painted them to make little Haitian houses.  Sorry my photograph is such poor quality.  I took it at our spring show and at that time never planned on having my own blog.  This year I am trying to do much better.

Tap Tap buses

I loved these buses and knew that I had to make a place for them when we were studing Haiti.  I was also very happy to find a lesson in the School Arts magazine that gave some suggestions on how to make a simple shape of a Tap Tap bus.

To introduce this project I read the book Tap- Tap which is just a great story.  The book is about a little girl named Sasifi who longs to ride a tap-tap, a truck that carries passengers and their belongings in rural Haiti. The book combines rich storytelling, humorous illustrations and funny moments and its brisk pace will keep your students engaged.  I have a background in literacy development and read alouds are great ways to model and increase language development in the classroom setting.

Tap taps are gaily painted buses or pick-up trucks that serve as share taxis in Haiti. I found some you tube videos that actually showed the busses being painted and a lot of the art work resembles graffiti art so my older kids really were impressed by the art work.

Pirates of the Caribbean

The Caribbean islands

My school has had a long standing tradition to pick a country to base the art curriculum on for that year, so last year I chose the Caribbean Islands. The kids had fun painting tropical fish, designing their own treasure maps, creating their own Pirates of the Caribbean and learning about the beautiful Haitian art including the tap tap buses. We were also very lucky to have some parents in our school who were from the Caribbean and they helped by providing books and artifacts from the islands. My first post will be pictures of the pirate self portraits that the kids did.  They were also required to label their picture with their own 3 word pirate name.