Today’s Ocean Week Comic Contest winners are both from the fifth grade. Please enjoy “Water Woman” by Alisha S. and “The Monkey of All Seas” by Morgan S.
"Water Woman" by Alisha S.
Alisha also won “Best Villain” for her evil Sea Monster.
"The Monkey of All Seas" by Morgan S.
See more comic contest winning entries in this post. Full details here!
Tune in tomorrow for even more student comics!
Our school held a comic contest for Ocean Week. Students had to come up with an aquatic super hero, write and fully illustrate a comic panel. What a success! Here are our first two winners, “Kara the Kelp Queen” by Mariel A. and “Sealed with a Kiss” by Riley S.
"Kara the Kelp Queen" by Mariel, Fifth Grade
"Sealed with a Kiss" by Riley, Fourth Grade
We were fortunate to have artist Marietta Ellis, a former automobile designer for General Motors, visit our school. She educated the children on the history of comics and held comic draw-along assemblies. Ms. Ellis helped judge the contest. Mariel was the grand prize winner and her comic was featured in our local paper.
Tune in next time for more amazing comic contest winners!
Happy Memorial Day from San Diego!
I spent yesterday walking around the harbor. Here is our sculptural version of the famous end-of-WWII photo, situated right next to the USS Midway.
Also in sight of the USS Midway – a large sculpture installation saluting Bob Hope’s contribution to the USO. The installation also features a real soundtrack of Bob entertaining the troops.
Hope you are enjoying your weekend…and giving thanks to all who have sacrificed for the US.
Armed with camera-equipped iPads and iPods, our fourth graders spread out in our school garden in search of alphabet letters. Each student was assigned a letter to photograph.
Letter O
It was interesting to see how they completed the assignment: some students found letters in the branches of trees, some created letters from stones and twigs. Some poured water on the pavement to draw their letter. If they were absolutely stumped (get it?) , I let them use a letter from the garden signs. I asked students to take 5-10 photos of their letter.
I am happy to report the fourth graders LOVED looking for letters. They were completely engaged, and helped each other. I heard a lot of shouts of “I found a T! Who has T?”
This week, students used their devices and the Pic Collage app to turn their best photos into a photo collage. I asked them to zoom in so that we could really see the letter – aim for making a letter so clear a kindergartener could recognize it. They emailed me their files and we reviewed them as a class.
Great work fourth graders!
Our fourth graders are in a pilot 1:1 iPad program, and it is a huge success. The goal is to turn all the photos into a free digital book downloadable through Apple’s iBooks store.
Inspiration for this project came from www.alphabetphotography.com.
UPDATE: see the completed whole-alphabet collages in this post.
Summer is almost here. For our last project of the year, second graders made sea creature sand art. Allow two 40-minute sessions.
Materials:
Day 1:
Students sketch various sea creatures using pencil and paper.
Day 2:
Each student picks a favorite sketch and draws it on black construction paper. Encourage kids to make simpler, larger designs.
Trace pencil lines with glue.
If kids make a glue mistake, they can try moving the glue around with a skewer.
Sprinkle on one color of sand at a time.
Then tap excess sand back into the tray.
When kids spill sand on the table….a house paint brush makes clean up easy.
Kids love to clean up sand with a large paintbrush.
Completed work:
Clean up:
I store leftover sand in old apple juice jugs. At the end of class, I put a funnel in each jug and let the kids pour in their sand.
Seriously fun! This would also be a fun summer camp or vacation art project.
