Make a trade

Hall bulletin board to explain to experience to those not involved at school

Thanks again to Nicole Hahn over at Mini Matisse for organizing this year's ATC trade.  What a terrific experience for my students.  I really enjoyed seeing all the varied cards and once the students understood they were theirs to keep; they were pretty psyched as well.  Here are a few photos from our experience.

A little close-up view

I posted this bulletin board in the hallway with photo copies of some of the cards we received.  The card wraps were posted with links to the states they came from.  This way non-participants were exposed to the experience and were able to read about the schools we received cards from.

Let me see your card, too!

Want to trade?

This was great...I love the art I received!

We loved trading.  The only dissappointment was the missing artist information on the back of some of the cards.  We were able to think like detectives in some instances to solve a few of the mysteries but wish that everyone had taken the time to add the information to each card.

Here is the worksheet we used to evaluate the cards.  In the center, students attempted to recreate their card.  The lower right circle was to contain three things students liked about the card or the experience of participating in the trade.

Most of all we can't wait to join in the trade again next year.  Thanks again Nicol Hahn!

Working on ATC in 4th grade

4th grade ATC

Students in both of my buildings are participating in the ATC exchange with  Mini Matisse over on blogspot.  I decided to structure the cards around particular lessons so that students would be exposed to artist or concepts by grade level and then able to prepare their card with some specific parameters.  Fourth graders investigated the artistic style of Laurel Burch, folk artist, who was propular within the last 40 years or so for her whimsical jewelry designs and other commercial items.  Students were drawn to the colors and patterns and jumped right in to develope their own individual ideas for their subject matter.  Burch is most well known for her cats but has also included other animals in her work.  Students choose cats, horses, dogs, unicorns from stencils I had prepared ahead of time.  A few creative individuals dabbled with their own personal ideas.  The backgrounds were created using coffee filters.  Students drew a variety of geometric shapes.  These were squirted with water.  Students watched in amazement as they discovered the shapes were morphing into organic shapes.  Finally, a way to truly demonstrate the differences in geometric and organic shapes.  The results were breathtakingly beautiful.  We have stashed away the left over scraps for future projects, these were too beautful to throw away!

White Fang by Analeah

Dragon by Hope

4th grade ATC trade.

I have wanted to participate in an ATC exchange for a couple of years now and just couldn't seem to pull it together.  Sitting here right now I am wondering "why not??"  This was the easiest day ever and the results were pretty good.  I allowed my students to create a card of choice using a medium of choice as well as subject matter.  We began by throwing out ideas and talking about how we would want to represent our school to students across the country.  Would we want to illustrate something about our community, our interest, the art that we have made or would we just want to present our creative selves?  Since, this was a choice lesson, the end results include all of the above.  The first batch of twenty is in the mail, off to a small school in SD and now we will practice being patient.  This week, we will pull together another 80 to send off to another program in another direction...don't have that address, yet.  Then, I'll be looking for another place to trade with maybe using another grade.