Kindergarten: Jasper Johns' OIl Pastel Numbers

The second official project that kindergartner's finished up before my leave was this Jasper Johns number project.  This is a repeat project that I did from last year, with some alterations.  Last year I was able to spread this out into more of a complete unit because I saw students twice a cycle, but this year I didn't feel I could spend that amount of time on this project, so I shortened it and altered it a bit more to fit within the Kindergarten Common Core Math standards. 

This project took about 2 1/2 days for most students to complete.  On the first day, I showed students my power point about Jasper Johns and we talked a bit about pop art.  One of the math standards for kindergarten is being able to count objects that are in a row, a column, a grid and in a random assortment, and then write the appropriate number.  To mirror that, I paired students up and gave them a brown bag filled with 9 wooden beads of different sizes.  One at a time, I had the students pull out a handful of beads, count them and write the number down in the first square on their paper in pencil.  Their partner was supposed to double check their counting and the number they wrote.  They alternated until each partner had their six squares filled with a number.

For the second class, I passed these back and showed the students how to turn their numbers into bubble numbers.  For their next set of directions, they were asked to choose ONE oil pastel color to color in their numbers.  For the most part, everyone followed that direction quite well.

The final portion of the second class and the subsequent class was to color in the background.  My directions were that students were supposed to choose THREE oil pastel colors to color in the background behind their numbers.  This is where some students didn't follow directions, or appeared to not be able to follow directions.  Many students grabbed an oil pastel and started coloring right over the top of their numbers.  Some colored around but used more than three colors.  I gave multiple demonstrations at each table to try and show students how to color AROUND their details, but many still struggled, so I sense that this is something that this group will need more work on!

You know the school year is growing close when...

...you have dreams about lesson planning!  Yup, that's right.  I had a dream about my graffiti unit that I want to do with my 7th graders and it was virtually planned in my sleep!  Anyone else have weird dreams like that about school?

Well, that dream kicked my butt into gear for planning and I decided to browse the books on Blick and use my winnings from The SmARTteacher July challenge to purchase some informational books on graffiti.  I did a post previously about my plans, or lack there of, for this graffiti unit. (Thanks to Shaun for responding to that post...I'll definitely be using that YouTube video!)  I purchased these two Griff graffiti books...one of which has some history and techniques in it, and the other is a workbook.  My 7th graders specifically asked to do graffiti projects so I'm thinking the workbook will be a good source for some homework assignments and bell ringers/warm-up exercises.

I also purchased this zentangle book.  I plan to incorporate the zentangles into this unit by talking about expression in fonts, to hopefully draw the female population in a little more to the idea of graffiti.  Again, it appears that the set-up of this book may lead to some good homework assignments and bell ringers/warm-ups to use in class during the unit and throughout the year.  These books should also, hopefully, be able to give me some reading material to photo copy off to incorporate those Common Core standards as well.

I'm still in my early brainstorming stages of this, but I think this will be basic set-up of the graffiti unit:

1. History of Graffiti

2. Discussion of fonts

3. Bubble letters

4.  3-D letters

5. Zentangled letters

6. Unit project: Design a graffiti inspired cover for your sketchbook.