ZENTANGLE!!!
Our whole school has learned about Zentangles.  You may have seen or heard your child talking about them.  Zentangles are fun to create and you don't need many supplies.  So what is a Zentangle?  The word can be broken down into two root words.  Zen = peace and harmony in mind body and soul... kind of like a way of meditation.  Tangle = messy knotted, kind of crazy!  The words are opposites and contrast each other.  The easiest way to explain it is to create peace and focus while making complicated marks on the paper.  Have you every kind of 'spaced out' and found yourself doodling on a paper?  It is kind of like that.

You'll notice that each of these are in different stages.  Look at the amazing detail and how much focus these tangles took.  We used black and white to create more contrast, and so we could focus on just the design.  A heart was added for emphasis and a pop of color.  Some of these were up before Jump Rope for Heart and decorated the hallways.

I encourage any of you to keep Zentangling!  You can find a lot of neat resources on line.  It is a new craze in the art, art therapy, scrap-booking, journaling, and meditation worlds.  It keeps our minds thinking creatively!

5th Grade- Clay Spherical Animals
One of the clay units for fifth grade that is loved by all.  5th grade is given the problem of creating a three-dimensional hollow sphere.  This hollow sphere then has to be a self supporting sculpture... and an animal!  Below is a picture after some of the animals have been through their first firing in the kiln.

From Left to Right: Wolf, Standing Pig (with hat), Elephant, Horse, Whale

These pieces are bisque, meaning that they have been fired once to cone 06 in the kiln and are ready to be glazed.  

Before the firing... there were several steps that flew by and I did not get any pictures.  We created a hollow sphere out of clay by building two pinch pots and scratch, slip (watered down clay like glue), attach, and smoothing them together.  Then, everyone thought and sketched out possible animals that could be made.  The sketches had to be drawn from at least two perspectives, to get the idea that the animals would be built three-dimensionally. 

Why do they have to be hollow you ask?  If we were to just roll a big ball of clay it would take too long to dry, and when it gets fired, it would more than likely crack because the temperature on the inside of the piece and the outside of the piece would be very different...causing stress... equalling a crack.

Day 2 was all about building.  We thought three dimensionally with cubes, spheres, pyramids and cylinders.  A lot of problem solving happened with this step.  We had an idea on paper and had to bring it to life.  Difficult for some, but for others building with clay comes more naturally.  It is all about thinking through it and making it work!  The last,  but one of the MOST IMPORTANT thing was to make a small air hole with a toothpick.  By creating an air hole it would allow the animal to dry evenly and would also allow the hot air from the kiln to circulate inside the sphere, creating a perfectly fired animal with no cracks!