Mr. Ziff's Kindergarten Topic of the Day: Silly Bands!

Every day of the school week, the children in Mr. Ziff's kindergarten take on a new, child generated topic.  Each student in turn chooses a topic for the whole class to explore.  The class uses tools like brainstorming, bubble mapping and lots and lots of writing to delve into their topics.  On studio days they use other tools ranging from clay to paint to wire, depending on the kind of topic that the children have chosen that day. 

In one area the students used rubber bands as tools to attach pieces of wood together.  This was a way to explore the elastic quality of "silly bands"

Some of the creations were quite simple and others very elaborate.

In another area, children used lengths of very flexible wire to make shapes that were reminiscent of silly band shapes.  The students learned how to attach the two ends of the wire together to make a circle and then they talked about their shapes being "balloons, bananas, hearts and moons."  Many of the children were very excited to be able to take their creations home with them that day.  One child said: "It's my very own invention of a silly band!"

Shadows

 Mr. Olf/ Ms. Biolatto's Kindergarten (Room 1) worked at the beginning of the year with a unit on shadows.  They decided to bring this topic to the studio for further exploration.

Children used scissors, black paper and sticks to create shadow puppets.  When they placed their shadow puppets on the overhead projector a large image suddenly loomed on the wall.  Many children decided that they looked like monsters and this started the creation of a whole series of monster shaped puppets.

A shadow screen

The darkened studio room

Beginnings - Creating Color

Our work began in Studio with experimentation with color. Children, Kindergarten through Fifth Grade (and many adults on back to school night) used these three tubs of primary colors to mix their own unique color combinations. They thought up interesting new names for their colors and wrote them on labels next to the cups.

Ms. Laichtman's fourth grade class was introduced to color value by the district arts teacher during a lesson on still life painting. As an extension of that concept, a small group spent their studio time arranging the cups of color according to color value. They worked together discussing the quality of the colors, assessing their intensity and creating a system for placing them in a sequence.