Community stitching

On both Monday and Wednesday this week, we spent most of the sessions stitching. On Monday we did a short brainstorm of what kinds of details the could put into their images. I copied compositions from the student's appliques onto the board and the students made suggestions on what would tell people more specifically that it was a rural/suburban/urban view. We reviewed some of the stitches, since the students haven't stitched in a few weeks: running, whipped running, satin, and couching stitches. 

Amanda outlines a sun before filling it in with satin stitch

 We compared the applique compositions to main idea and the embroidery stitches to details in a story. Cindy and I helped kids get started and solve any stitching snafus, but by now most of the children are confident in threading needles and tying knots.

Tyler works on windows and a bowl to feed the dog he'd included in the applique

 Suns, windows and doors, streams and ponds were popular additions. One girl even figured out how to make a squirrel! As always in embroidery, I stress that if you can draw it with a pencil, you can stitch with a needle and thread!! Most of the students approached it in this more freeform, direct way, stitching designs directly on the fabric without drawing it first, showing me how well they understood this drawing on paper/stitching on fabric comparison.

Erin's purple, whip-stitched windows really stand out on the yellow house

 Many students discovered that the whipped running stitch and the satin stitch made bolder images to show up on the patterned and brightly colored fabrics.

 I'm very excited by Daniella's, below. Her bush has tiny red berries in a sparse seed stitch she came up with on her own as well as satin stitch sun, stream, and a sidewalk in front of her house.

On Monday we administered the Science post-test, since we've completed our work on river systems and have moved on to the social studies portion. I'll post details on that later, but they did very well! On Wednesday we also prepared the children's timeline books to be hung in the hall- I had finished sewing their early rivers-of-the-world maps into bags and brought them in in which to place the accordion books.

There's  a short break for the Winter holidays, but we'll be back to finish up our last 6 days in January. When we come back we'll be doing some problem/solution writing based off the choices they made in their little community stitching, and then compile the stitcheries to be added to the collaborative project.

The book that we wrote the timeline from was "A River Ran Wild" by Lynne Cherry. The children are working on the skill of summarizing, and were able to break down the events in the story of the life of the Nashua River into what we called the "most important events" with some support from Marie and myself. With scaffolding, they broke the story into its' four main parts; Native American times, Settler times, Industrial times, and Modern times. We worked on the summary during the reading block, and the kids did a great job. They are getting much better at discerning details from main events; which is an offshoot of Main Idea/Detail.

The books are incredibly beautiful, and the integration of literacy and art is at its best in this one piece! It's one of my favorites of all the activities we've done. I am learning so many new ways to use art to engage the kids as we integrate it into literacy.

The latest project we are working on is the building of cities and towns through fabric and applique, which Marie has done a wonderful job of describing. We've done a lot of cooperative learning with pre-designated groups, but for this I wanted to try a random selection of groups. I chose this purposefully so that the kids could understand/experience different groupings and the fact that societal interactions are often random experiences. They did very well with this grouping and were excited to find out who was in their group as they each picked a "secret" fabric from the bag!

Communities and cooperative learning

On Friday we began the next stage of our collaborative wallhanging- community applique/embroideries! When I arrived Cindy was in the midst of a review of the 3 types of communities: rural, suburban, and urban, and was discussing some problems and solutions related to life in each place. Using the color-coded selections of base fabrics I'd brought in for our artmaking, Cindy let each child pick out a fabric with their eyes closed to sort the class into cooperative learning groups. We had a "rural" group of 7 students, 2 "suburban" groups of about 5 students each, and an "urban" group of 7. Once divided up, the students were given a large sheet of paper to come up with 2 problems and solutions each, and a sentence describing life in that locale from each student. Cindy, the reading specialist, and I worked with each group to help keep them on track and mediate the suggestions.

one of the suburban teams



the urban team was talking about crime



another suburban team brainstorms problems and solutions

the rural team works with Ms O'Donnell

each team's report page posted on the board

With the reports on the board we focused on what it was like to live in each place, and what we might see. The rural areas had wide open spaces, lots of trees and fields, and very few houses. The suburban spaces had more houses and businesses, but there was still space between the buildings, yards, and parks. The urban spaces were crowded and noisy, with tall skyscrapers and row homes all in a row, old and new, fancy and run-down, with lots of businesses and places to work. With each description we closed our eyes and imagined what it would like. I had a sample fabric collage for each community type to use as examples of how the compositions might look. I described the concept of applique and collage, and we compared fabric and stitching to paper and glue. I showed the kids the pre-cut squares of fabric, and we figured out some different geometric and organic shapes we could make from the squares. We also brainstormed what the fabric patterns could represent in our communities- an animal fabric could be a vet's office or shelter, a musical notes fabric could represent a music store of concert hall, a red fabric could be a barn or a brick rowhome, money fabric could represent a bank or a store..... With so many ideas bouncing around, the kids were ready to get started. They remained in their groups, and each group was instructed to create an applique composition representing their community type and its features. Cindy and I went around showing the kids how to pin the pieces down so they wouldn't get lost.

Angelica's urban composition with lots of overlapping buildings

 Cindy reminded the kids that this step was the "Main idea" part of the project- simple building shapes with big blocks of color, and warned them not to get too detailed or fiddly.

Emily's rural composition with LOTS of open space



Erin's suburban composition has a school and 2 nicely spaced houses



The suburban team focused on cutting out and placing shapes

The children really understood how different the sense of space was in each type of community, as evidenced by the compositions they created. I was afraid lots of pieces would get lost, so I brought the stack of collages home to zip through the machine and anchor down the tiny pieces. Next time the students will have a chance to embroider details on their towns. 

Lots of open space and few houses in the rural images

some more variety and business in the suburban groups-
 almost everybody included a "school"

The urban compositions are very busy and crowded
lots of overlapping pieces and fabrics representing shops

I felt this was an extremely productive and well-organized day. The students worked well in these more random groupings, and I felt that they really "got it". I've noticed that people of all age groups really respond to fabric collage- it's so connected to our familiarity with things like quilts, that composition comes naturally, moreso than when working with paper.

River timeline books

 On Wednesday we completed the river timeline books by binding them. Cindy had the kids prepared with summaries of their notes for each time period written out onto sticker labels to be inserted into the individual pages. I brought along the chipboard for sturdy covers as well as paper maps of the Delaware Valley region cut down to cover the chipboard. It was mostly a follow-the-directions lesson as we moved step by step through how to cover the boards and bind the book. Each child received 2 boards and 2 map pieces. They selected which side of the map the wanted to be showing, then glued it onto the board, folding over the corners and edges and gluing them down, like wrapping a package. Then we decided which side should be the front cover and which the back, and glued their accordion paper first to the back side, then the front side, careful to center it and line up the 2 covers.

Once the covers were complete and the book bound, the students doublechecked that their summary labels and everything was well glued down. Cindy and I roamed the room helping students as needed complete the binding.

When all binding was complete, we brainstormed some possible titles for the books. The students came up with: "The Olden Times", "Life of a River", "A River Changes", "River Timeline". We wrote each suggestion on the board and made not that book titles are always capitalized. Then I asked students to tell what their favorite time period was and why. I had also brought in photocopies of maps of Philadelphia from each of the time periods we had covered in the book for the students to select one image representing their favorite tie period to collage onto the front of their book with their title. At the end of class I offered the simile "A book is like a body" to see if anyone could figure out why (head, spine, and foot are parts of books, and covers/content are like outside/inside of a person).

 It's very satisfying to turn something you've drawn and written into a real book. The students were quite proud of how these turned out.

River Timeline

Wednesday and Friday this week we continued our focus on the Delaware River, but this time looked at the timeline of who was here and how it was used. We started off by doing a guided reading of (help me out Cindy- I forget the title and author!) 

As we read the book aloud as a class, Cindy and I would stop and explain any terms we thought were hard to understand. The children each had 4 post-it notes to take notes for the 4 periods of time we would be discussing. On the board I created a similar timeline showing the 4 time periods of Indians, Settlers, Industrial, and Modern. As we moved through the book, we wrote notes on the board under each time period. I also had a strip of paper folded in 4 to visually illustrate the changes in the landscape and the river over time.

With Wednesday being a half day, the children were a bit distractible, and it took longer than I expected to get through the guided reading. We had just enough time at the end to pass out the folded accordion book pages for the students to put their names and post-it notes into.

Friday was more productive. With the paper strip timeline up on the board, we reviewed the special information about each time period. The students remembered quite a bit! We also brainstormed some various ways to represent trees, tree stumps, wigwams, farms, houses, factories, and inventions to create a visual timeline in our books as background and illustration for the text. The students were allowed to use colored pencil or crayon to draw their symbols. We started off with the river representing the timeline down the center of the book, and with the color changing on the third page to show how dirty the river got during the industrial revolution. While students were working, Cindy and I circulated the room, encouraging students to fill the pages, asking them how they were representing their ideas, helping them if they got stuck, etc.

It's interesting to see how wide the range of artistic development there is among the students. Some of them followed directions and used the images as symbols, like on a map.

Mary's visual timeline

Brooke's timeline with symbols

Other students took a more pictorial approach, drawing scenes along their timeline. 

 

Samia's scenic timeline

 

Angelica got engrossed in details in the wigwams and horse

Isaiah's is between symbolic and scenic

Next time we'll copy sentences describing each time period onto sticker labels to insert on each page and bind our books with covers.

River ribbons

On Wednesday, we started off the lesson looking at some artwork by New Hope Impressionists and other artists who have created views of the river. A range of images was included, showing sights from the Delaware River Gap down to Gloucester, NJ. We talked about how our last word brainstorm for the river cinquain poem was just from our heads and our ideas of rivers, but this time we'd use the pictures for inspiration. With the kids paired up, each pair got a color copy of an image to view, and the class was instructed to use the title and artist as the starting point for a word splash, then consider the setting (including season, weather, physical features of the landscape), actions (what people were or could do in that painting), and sensory words (how it would feel to be in the picture). Students spent about 30 minutes together brainstorming ideas. The brainstorm was intended to prepare students with inspiration for a free verse poem to be written after they completed their river ribbon.

Daniel Garber, Tohickon

Using the river poems students wrote based off of last week's wordsplash, students wrote them out onto ribbons to be sewn into the river for the collaborative piece. We remembered a reading we had done a few weeks before comparing a river to "ribbons of water". I asked them about what was important about a cinquain form and suggested we change colors on the ribbons to suggest the different lines of the poem. I explained how to use the fabric markers on the ribbons, and then the students copied their poems onto the ribbons. It required a light touch, which some students had no trouble with. Other students used too much pressure and were frustrated with how much the markers "bled" on the ribbons. I find this to be an interesting exercise for penmanship- it needed students to slow down and be more careful about spacing and sensitive to the surface. Some students figured it out, and others still had trouble. To diffuse the frustration with the medium we compared the ribbons again to water, saying we were setting our words into the water. This revealed another metaphor for the process, which not particularly overtly made as a connection, was one of the ideas we were interested in having the students learn.
Once students completed copying out their cinquain poem, they brought their ribbon over to the collaborative piece to select its placement. Students were very familiar with the river features vocabulary in stating where they wanted their ribbon to be along the river.
With everybody pinned, Cindy explained how to continue with their free verse poem inspired by the images at the beginning of class. She compared word choice in a poem to the colors, textures, and brushstrokes an artist uses in a painting. I reinforced this idea by showing the elements of color and texture in our collaborative piece. The rest of class was spent helping students with the writing process.

Plants of the Delaware and River words brainstorm

On Friday, I hung up the collaborative Delaware River map for the kids to copy into their sketchbooks while a few of the students finished up their leaf embroideries. Cindy helped the embroiderers while I got set up for our lesson. We brought in the laptop and projector in order to take a look at a satellite view of our watershed. The kids noticed that the satellite view was like a bird's-eye view. We located the Delaware and compared it to the fiber version to make sure we could find all our river parts (source, meander, tributary, mouth/delta).

looking at the satellite view-
the kids were excited to see the zoom in and out to see the world
and then their school close-up

 We pointed out the low land in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey where there are many farms and a lot of "green" on the satellite view. We brainstormed with the kids some of the plants and crops that grow in our area, based on the farms they've seen or visited, or fruits and vegetables they eat at home. They came up with strawberries, corn, tomatoes, blueberries, pumpkins, watermelons, and carrots. We even noted that Chester County, PA is famous for mushrooms! We saw lots of green in NJ, and I pointed out the gigantic forest of pine trees called the Pine Barrens. We looked at the mountains and talked about why there aren't many farms up in the mountains, because of colder temperatures and rough, rocky terrain, but there are lots of forests.

Emily cuts out her embroidered leaf

 Next we transitioned to cutting our leaves out to place on the collaborative Delaware River map. I asked the students to decide where they wanted to put their leaf, mark it on their drawing, and have a reason why they wanted it there. I showed the students my sample cut-out leaf, and Cindy noted it was an organic shape not a geometric shape.

Liz decides where her leaf should go on her map
 and Justin shares his leaf ready to pin up

 Cindy supervised the cutting-out while I stayed near the river model ready to pin the kids' leaves as they were finished.As students completed cutting out their leaf, they came up to me with their leaf and sketchbook to tell me where they wanted their leaf to go and why. Some chose spots in New Jersey because that's where they go in the summer. Some wanted their leaf up in the mountains with the forests. A few wanted to be in the suburbs because there are lots of trees where they live.

the giant river model before the leaves got pinned

When all the leaves went up, we moved on to brainstorming for our next project- a river poem to add to our map. Cindy helped keep us on track for what kind of words and language they'll need for writing their cinquain next week by prompting possibilities as I wrote the students' words up onto the board into a giant word splash. The children created their own version in their sketchbooks, taking notes, which finally, we had them go back and color/circle words they think they'll want to use.

Apology Poems and Embroidery!

On Wednesday we had an assembly, the Crabgrass Theater performed short poems for us using puppets. The children were very entertained and inspired! I had chosen the "Apology Poetry" activity purposely as a follow up to cash in on the inspiration of the assembly and to connect Marie's art for the day, leaf rubbings. The children did an incredible job on both the art and the poem. They really connected their feelings from the poem to what Marie had them doing, leaf rubbings. It was a perfect storm!

The leftover paper from the rubbings was so pretty, Marie suggested the kids somehow use it, so we put their final edited poem (only some spelling errors) onto the paper and hung it in the hall. The kids felt incredibly successful!
I had to give them a lesson on the format of the poem beforehand, at the beginning of the lesson. Marie and I had the kids brainstorm what people do to leaves, and had the kids pretend they were leaves being separated from the only home they ever knew, the tree. We all physically acted out this separation and it created profound empathy for the leaf. We acted out how we love the sound of a cruching leaf, and pretended to jump into a big pile of crunchy leaves. This role-playing made the poems even more touching and heartfelt!

Friday, the kids worked on embroidering their leaves. It was the perfect way to end the busy week. They needed some downtime, Marie and I floated around the room helping with threading and knotting, and the leaves came out beautifully!

Leaf stitching

On Friday the students had a chance to embroider their leaf rubbings to make one of them stand out through bright color and to add detail. I introduced a new stitch to them- satin stitch to make thick lines. Cindy and I helped the students with threading needles, tying knots, and problem-solving.

 For the most part it was a quiet and productive way to end the week.

 I believe the metaphor of stitching in this project is that embroidering is a way of adding detail to an image just like we add detail to a main idea. The stitches and colors are like the variety of vocabulary one uses to make a written piece more interesting. I think we need to make that connection more explicit.

 Craftsmanship is surprisingly high among these students in their stitching. I see mostly careful, even stitches. Only 2 students needed help couching down giant floats on the surface, whereas last year at least a 3rd of each class had trouble with the concept of even size and even space stitching. It makes me wonder how their measuring and ruler skills or their estimating skills are in Math.

 This surprises me to an extent, as their handwriting is not as careful, and I've seen them rush through other activities. Hopefully this process helps develop fine motor skills and attention span that could be transferred to other domains.

Another curious aspect of the students' work process is that so many of them feel compelled to stand up while they stitch. I don't mind if they stand, except then sometimes they start to wander and clump into social groups. I think perhaps when they sit they don't feel like they have full extension of their arm for pulling the thread through the fabric.

Apology Poems

Cindy had the children complete their "Apology to a Leaf" poems and copy them onto the iron transfers of their leaf rubbings and then mounted and hung them in the hallway!

 Some of them show off the students' new thesaurus skills for learning new vocabulary and making writing more interesting. Take a look:

 Alex: "To My Poor Leaf"- I confess for ripping you in half then breaking your spine. I was wrong because I was bored sitting on the ground at my soccer game. I'm sorry and I tried to put you back together with bandaids.

 Hailey: "Sorry to my leaf"- I am penitent for plunging into a pile of you and ripping you apart. I'm so apologetic, please forgive me. I was bored on a fall day and I saw a leaf. I picked it up and crunched you. I saw a pile of leaves and jumped in them.

 Laia: "To my leaf"- I ripped the leaf into pieces. I was wrong to rip you in pieces. I ripped you because I wanted to make an Art Project. I apologize.

 Daniella: "Sorry Leaf"- Please forgive me for pulling you off the tree. I just could not help myself. You were so pretty.

Emily: "Fall Leaves"- I am sorry I stepped on you and ripped and crunched you in my hand. I apologize. I stepped on you. I was wrong. I crunched you because it was a neat sound.