The Quarks did a little celebrating of Valentine’s Day with a choice between two books – they ended up choosing Happy Valentine’s Day, Curious George over Fancy Nancy. Good thing it was a short book, because our outdoor reading time
Weekly Summary: Dragons – Quarks – Art
In celebration of the Lunar New Year, we read Amy Wu and the Patchwork Dragon by Kat Zhang. We followed up with a cool dragon craft inspired by the book. We had a fire dragon, a rainbow dragon, and a
Weekly Summary: Finger knitting – Quarks – Art
Quarks started art last week with an outdoor reading of The Mitten String by Jennifer Rosner. In the book, a girl knits a pair of mittens for a deaf mother and her baby when she notices that they sleep with
Weekly Summary: Snowflake Suncatchers – Quarks – Art
We started art with a read aloud of The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. This was especially fun since most, if not all of the Quarks are very familiar with this story. We then made snowflake sun catchers loosely
Weekly Summary: Air Dry Clay – Muons – Art
We are continuing our clay exploration by using air dry clay instead of ceramic clay. Each Muon was given a portion of clay to freely sculpt, roll, slap, wet, and shape in any way they liked. As they worked we
Weekly Summary: Glass jar lanterns – Neutrons – Art
I thought we could all use some more light during those gloomy days and long nights so I decided to make lanterns with the group. We up cycled glass jars- Neutrons created one of a kind designs with sharpies on
Weekly Summary: Grouting & Props – Electrons – Art
Today was phase two of our mosaic project: grouting. The thinset had hardened up, and the tiles were (for the most part) stuck in place, so today’s job was filling in the cracks. Everyone got a paper cup full of
Weekly Summary: Op Art Hands – Electrons – Art
In today’s art lesson, we took on an op art drawing, based on this video. I showed them Bridget Riley’s 1961 Movement in Squares, and we discussed its illusion and effect on the viewer. We even widened the scope momentarily
Weekly Summary: Collaborative Art – Muons – Art
This week we focused on team work, collaboration and creativity. Each group of students had the opportunity to create a 2-d project on paper using varying mediums from crayon to sharpie and paint. There was an opportunity to work on
Weekly Summary: Mosaic – Electrons – Art
Today we took advantage of the lovely weather to work outside on some mosaics. I introduced the idea by showing off some of Chicago-based artist Edgar Miller’s mosaic work. We passed around the dry thinset mortar, and they started positioning