Ceramic Tea Sets

Johnny, in deep concentration, working on his second tea cup. The kids had one final tea set work session. Jessica laid down the law when it came to the expectations: all pieces had to be completely finished and smoothed to her satisfaction or they would not be going in the kiln! The kids got right to work.

Saylor had to finish the spout on her pot and several tea cups. The idea was to have the set go together, so notice how the top of her teapot has the same round ball as the handles on her tea cups.
I don't think I've ever seen Cody as proud of an art project as he is of his behemoth teapot. He's been working diligently on it for weeks. It is a wee bit past the specifications in terms of size, but Jessica said she thinks she can squeeze it into her kiln, thank goodness!
Look at the creativity of Austin's teapot! He put a face on the front, with the spout as the nose. Love it.
Dylan giving his pot the rabbit ears.
Jessica giving Myron a few final instructions for finishing up his pieces. Everyone got done in the allotted time...very impressive work session!

Cinquain with Monhegan

I was too busy writing cinquains to take photos of our polycom with Monhegan last week. It was great seeing Jessie and her two students, Dalton and Quinn. We have been getting together for a couple months now to work on different types of poetry forms. We have done haiku, limericks, and now cinquains. This was a pretty easy form and everyone wrote several down on our wiki to share with each other.

Here are some examples:

Ocean Untamed, Unpredictable Moving, Crashing, Pleasing Fierce, Calm, Angry, Pure Sea By Dalton

butterfly delicate beautiful flying crawling walking happy sad scared mad insect By Saylor

woods
trees, branches
swaying, noise, falling
dark, green, quiet, peaceful
secret
By Austin

Dragons
Scales, Fire
Flying, clawing, biting
Wise, brave, silent, deadly
Reptiles.
By Quinn

dad
boat,lobsters
sleeping, hunting, fishing
friendly, kind, nice, fun
Nate
By Cadin

There were 120 posts in just an hour! I wonder what we'll be working on next?

Tlingit Masks

We are finishing up our art in culture unit. Thought we'd go out with a bang and do some Tlingit masks. Though the Tlingit are best known for their totem poles, they are also very skilled at wooden mask making. Their culture is broken into clans based upon animals like the eagle and raven. We looked at a lot of examples of both shamanic and animal inspired masks. I especially liked the frog and mosquito masks that we looked at. Guess what color the mosquito mask was? Red, of course!





Here are our finished masks displayed in our own totem pole! Love it.

April Fools 2011

I may or may not have added chili pepper to their waterbottles.
So he went and dumped the water. And tried again. Unfortunately for him, he didn't realize that I had rubbed the pepper on the spout.
This is Cadin's 'hot face'.

Swim Lesson #2

Mosaics

Our newest Art in Culture lesson was on Mexican mosaics. I kept the squares pretty small, but even with that, we didn't get finished in our hour long lesson. We'll have to return to it at a later date, but it was sort of mesmerizing to work with the tiny colored squares. I would have loved to use all the art glass that my friend Claire gave me, but I was too worried about injury. To myself, mainly.
Cody took inspiration from an example on the Keynote presentation of this gorgeous flaming piece.
His brother went with the complete opposite palette and theme, with a focus on water.
This I just had to post because I got him chuckling and then caught it on camera. Myron is known for his deadpan and I have to work hard to capture his giggles!

World's Shortest Movie

Let's just say I'm working the kinks out with my new camera.

That is code for: I have no idea what I'm doing. I thought I was taking a whole scene from diving. It ended up being 0.1 seconds. Sigh. But you get the idea. Kids on the diving board showing their sweet moves.

Tank Update

So. We found out about the white ribbons. We checked it out here and yes, it does say "sea slug forum". Can you believe that? This picture was from the website as my photos didn't come out well. We have less ribbons since we only have three rough-mantled doris (dorises? Dori? Doru?) in there. We look forward to loads of babies. I can only imagine.

And I managed to capture the tube worm. My best guess is that it is the tailed pripulid worm, though it doesn't seem to have the ribbed neckline. It is in this area as opposed to some of the others, but if anyone knows better, let us know! It appears to be currently ingesting a periwinkle, which is inside it's tentacles at the moment. It also seems to like being squeezed beneath that rock. Which I don't mind as it looks more like a sea anemone than a white flaccid worm creature that I have nightmares about.

I just told a fisherman to bring us 'more cool stuff'. That could prove interesting.

April Fools!

This was what our neighbor, Donny, got from his chicken. And no, Cody's hand has not grown to gigantic proportions! It is a little bit bigger than a robin's egg. The world's tiniest omelet is in the works.