Lesson 4

·         Begin by quickly refreshing the children’s memories of what you’ve talked about and tell them to think about their project while you set up

·         Put up the color wheel and diagram of the face so they can reference it

·         Tell them how to mix colors

o   Take a dab from each color you want to use like red and blue and put them on a different spot on your palette rather than mixing all the red and blue together

o   Do not swirl all the colors on your palette. You will get a mucky brown

o   If you want to make something lighter, add white. If you want to make something darker, add black, but only a little because black is very powerful

o   To make brown, mix two opposites (remind them how to tell which colors are opposites)

·         Tell them to use short quick strokes rather than long ones across the entire canvas; you will cover the canvas faster that way

·         Let them work! Go around the room offering advice and guidance as necessary

Lesson 3

·         Begin by asking the children what they remember from last time and refreshing their memory. Ask them if they would like to share what they worked on last time and have them explain what they did.

·         “Every piece needs a background. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a background you might see in real life like a hill. It could just be a couple different colors blended together. There just needs to be something behind the subject. You should also shade the background, though remember to use contrast to highlight the important part.”

·         Tell the children that putting an object on top of another object, such as painting a person with the ocean in the background, is called overlap. Overlap is important because it makes the painting more interesting and it makes it seem more real because it looks more 3D.

·         “If you decide to draw a horizon, keep your subject’s feet below the horizon line. The earth continues beyond where the person is standing and you can still see it. The closer a person is to the horizon line, the farther away they look.” Show them a drawing that demonstrates this.

·         Give the children some time to make a drawing with a background. When they’re finished, ask if anyone wants to share.

·         Explain the rule of thirds. This means the piece is usually more interesting if you divide it into thirds, so you can either put the horizon line at the top third or bottom third of the page. It also means that people’s eyes naturally move towards the corners of the page, so you’ll usually put your subject in a corner. However, there are exceptions to every rule, and if you’re painting a portrait the person is usually going to go in the center.

·         “Remember the background is still important and it should still reflect the subject of your painting. The background is used to create something called context. Context is the background information that helps explain what something is about. For example, if I were to just draw a portrait with a blank background, you would know what the painting was about: the person. However, if I added a background it might tell you more about the person. For example, if I painted a church in the background it might make you think that I go to church with that person. The background is context that tells you more about the relationship.”

·         Tell the children that context is also used in poetry. Setting a scene for something to happen is context. This can be done through the description they practiced.

·         Remind them that the main goal of poetry is to make a reader feel something. This can be done through description. Always try to make your descriptions unusual. Something a reader hasn’t heard before will mean more to them then something they’ve heard a thousand times.

·         A phrase that’s repeated over and over in writing is called a cliché. Clichés should be avoided. An example of a cliché would be writing “tears stream down my face”. This has been heard many times before, and it loses its meaning. You want to make it clearer why you’re crying and what it feels like. Remind them of the Sylvia Plath poem and her tears like vinegar.

·         Tell them that Plath’s description works better because it creates a more specific feeling. Ask them what feeling it creates.

·         Give the children time to practice unusual descriptions.

·         Another tool of the poet is rhythm. Read “hospital bar”:

i'm pouring thick
from a wineglass maroon bruised
fingertip serenade across this
hospital white corridor
floor a splash watery dense
like hard hat hands shatter
break crack eyelids open like
crusty aged underwater sea
urchins in the shell of something
so forgotten even forget-me-nots
can't remember what it felt like to
be flowers so green was the ocean
floor like the hospital scrubs
on tenured physicians or the crinkling
vines of a grape arbor trilling
into a cloudless sky what sky what
sky what sky the sky is
dead like the staining drink escaping
this broken flute that plays only flat
melodies of what it meant to be a
woman in a twenty first
century age of the innocent i think
not i think not only of emergency
room tabloids of slicing hearts on grey's
anatomy but of the feet it takes
to create a burgundy glass of bitter
wine that's pouring
thick i am

·         Ask the children if there are any words they don’t understand

·         Point out that this is an example of an ending that looks like the beginning

·         “Now, I don’t know what this poem is about from looking at the words. However, it does give me a sense of how the poet is feeling. What feeling does this poem give you? How would you describe it?”

·         Point out that the poem is 28 lines but one sentence. Ask the children what they think this does to the tone and remind them what tone is.

·         Point out that the poem is not a proper sentence and it doesn’t have any capital letters. Tell them that in poems, they don’t have to follow the rules, they just have to find a way to get their point across.

·         “Another part of this poem is repetition, or the repeating of phrases. Where do you see that in this poem? What do you think the repetition accomplishes or means to the poem?”

·         “In this poem, I think the repetition of “what sky what sky what sky” creates a build-up leading to the changing and ending of the phrase “the sky is dead”. You can repeat things in poetry when you want to emphasize certain phrases, like in a chorus.”

·         Tell the children that rhyming also helps create rhythm and read a stanza from one of the previous poems. Ask them if they think the poem is fast or slow and what that means for the feeling of the poem.

·         Tell the children that rhythm is also created by the number of syllables per line. Write syllable on the board and explain that it means the number of vowel sounds in a word. You can do the clapping exercise with a few words (e.g. dog, puppy, Labrador) to show them what a syllable is.

·         “The fewer syllables per line, the faster the poem goes. In “hospital bar”, the poet has very few syllables per line even though it is only one sentence. She breaks her lines in the middle of the sentence to do this. Breaking lines like this creates tension and makes the reader want to go to the next line. The more tension there is, the faster the poem reads. Slow poems will have longer lines that seem more like full sentences while faster poems are short and choppy.”

·         Give the children time to practice rhythm. When they’re finished, ask if any of them want to share and ask what rhythm they wanted. 

Find "hospital bar" here: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2301753/1/hospital-bar

Lesson 2

·         Remind the children what you left off with and ask them what they remember. Refresh their memory.

·         Ask them what the six main colors are and show them the color wheel. Tell them they can use these six main colors to make a painting and they can mix more colors with these.

·         Ever color comes from three colors called primary colors: blue, red, and yellow. Show them how the color wheel shows what colors they make (e.g. blue and red make purple, so purple is between them)

·         Tell them they can use all the colors, or only a few, even one. Tell them that a painting made in one color is called a monochromatic painting. Write monochromatic on the board.

·         Tell them they can also pick either warm or cool colors, and point out these sections on the wheel. Ask them what warm colors make them feel and what cool colors make them feel.

·         Tell them can also choose between bright and dull. Bright colors would be like neon colors: pinks, yellows, bright oranges, and so on. Ask them how bright colors make them feel. Dull colors usually have a lot of gray in them. They are closer to black and white. Ask them how dull colors make them feel.

·         “You can mix and match these elements—warm and cool, bright and dull—to create contrast. Contrast is when two things stand out against each other because they are opposites.”

·         Show them the paper with your name on it. Tell them it has a lot of contrast because black and white are opposites.

·         Tell them there are three kinds of contrast: warm and cool, bright and dull, and opposite colors. Show them the opposite colors on the color wheel and how you can tell (they’re across from each other).

·         Show them the paper with the superhero symbols on it. Ask them what kind of contrast they see in each one.

·         You use opposites to make contrast. What is the opposite of red/orange/yellow? You can also make contrast with bright and dull. To make something stand out, make it bright; to make something blend in, make it dull. If you put purple and yellow next to each other, that would make contrast. If you wanted to do a painting in one color, you could have a really light green next to a dark green.

·         “Contrast makes things stand out. The part of your drawing you want people to notice most is the part that should have the most contrast.”

·         Ask them what should have more contrast in a portrait, the face or the background? In a painting of a cat in a chair?

·         Give the children time to make a drawing with markers using contrast. When they’re finished, ask if anyone wants to share and ask them what kinds of contrast they used.

·         “Now let’s talk about shapes. Shapes are important in drawing because you can use them to make a map of what you are going to draw. You can draw the basic shapes to show the general shape of what you are drawing. What are the basic shapes?”

·         Tell them you’re going to show them how to make a face and they can follow along in their sketchbooks if they like

·         You don’t have to use this narration, but here’s basically what to do:  start by drawing a circle. This is the skull. Now we’ll draw the jaw, making an upside-down egg shape for the face. Next, we draw lines through the middle of the face. This line marks where the eyes will go, and this line marks the middle of the face where the nose and lips will go. Now we can draw the eyes. Start with circles, then draw the lids, an oval shape that’s pointy at the ends. The eyebrows go above. The nose is one of the hardest parts of the face to draw. I’ll explain this more in a second, but for now let’s draw a triangle for the shape of the nose. You can draw circles at the bottom for the nostrils. Now for the lips: start by drawing a pointy oval, just like we did with the eyelids. Now we draw a line through the middle that goes straight, then dips down in the middle, and goes straight again. The top lip goes up, curves twice, then goes down again. Now we can erase the unnecessary lines and fill in the rest of the drawing.

·         Tell them the lines through the middle of the face are called line of symmetry. Symmetry means that if you folded the paper along the line, the image on each side of the line would match up perfectly.

·         Ask them what other shapes they see on the face.

·         “Now I’m coming back to the nose. The nose is one of the hardest parts of the face to draw because it is made of shadow. Shadow makes contrast on the face between light and dark. When you draw shadow, it’s called shading.” Show them the second part of the diagram of the face.

·         Tell them that a light source is where the light is coming from and in each painting, they will need to pick a light source. Show them how the light source affects the shading on the second diagram.

·         Ask the children to find partners and begin passing out canvases and paints. Tell them to look at the person they’re drawing and that they can ask them to look up if they need to. Briefly remind them what they just learned (contrast and shading) and remind them of the color wheel.

Lesson 1

·         Start by reading Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”:

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

·         Ask the children what the poem makes them feel

o   If they’re having trouble, ask them if it’s happy or sad or read a specific line

·         Ask them what makes them think it’s happy or sad or whatever feeling they said

·         Now ask them what the poem is about, keeping in mind how it made them feel

o   If they’re having trouble, point out specific lines like “the children, they know/The place where the sidewalk ends.” Ask them what’s next to a sidewalk, what you might be stepping on after you get off the sidewalk. Ask them what goes on the road and try to lead them so they know it’s about growing up (e.g. you can only drive when you’re 16)

o   Other interpretations are okay

o   If they have a meaning, ask them if they think the poem thinks it is a happy or sad thing or both

·         “The purpose of a poem is to express a feeling. There will be some poems that you cannot interpret, but a good poem will let you know how to feel, and that is the most important part. Silverstein lets you know how to feel with description.”

o   Give specific examples: he doesn’t just say the grass is growing, he says how it grows “the grass grows soft and white”

o   Look at the line “To cool in the peppermint wind.” Ask the children what peppermint makes them think of and how that could be used to describe wind.

o   Ask them if there are any words that stood out and told them how to feel about the poem

·         Give the children some time to write a scene and tell them to use as much description as possible using all five senses—taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell—to tell the reader how to feel about the place they are describing.

o   Afterwards, ask if anyone wants to share and try to point out the lines in each girl’s piece that made you feel the most.

·         Explain what a stanza is (a paragraph in poetry). Tell them that in the second stanza of the poem, the poem changes with the line “Let us leave this place.” Poems move. They have a beginning and an ending.

·         There are three ways to make a moving poem:

o   Tell a story. Silverstein does this in his poem when he mentions walking a walk that is measured and slow and leaving to find the place where the sidewalk ends.

o   Coming back to the beginning. This is when a poem begins and ends with the same or similar lines because it is restating the main idea of the poem.

§  Read “A Pizza the Size of the Sun” by Jack Prelutsky:

I’m making a pizza the size of the sun,

a pizza that’s sure to weigh more than a ton,

a pizza too massive to pick up and toss,

a pizza resplendent with oceans of sauce.

I’m topping my pizza with mountains of cheese,

with acres of peppers, pimentos, and peas,

with mushrooms, tomatoes, and sausage galore,

with every last olive they had at the store.

My pizza is sure to be one of a kind,

my pizza will leave other pizzas behind,

my pizza will be a delectable treat

that all who love pizza are welcome to eat.

               

The oven is hot, I believe it will take

a year and a half for my pizza to bake.

I hardly can wait till my pizza is done

my wonderful pizza the size of the sun.

§  Ask them if there are any words they don’t understand

o   Chorus, or a repeated line. Songs use choruses to restate the main idea of the song. Ask the children if they know a song that uses a chorus and if any of them would be willing to sing it. If not, just ask them to say what the chorus is.

·         Give the children time to write a poem using one of the three forms. When they’re finished, ask them to share.

·         “Now let’s talk about describing things in unusual ways. For example, if I asked you to describe how something sounded, you probably wouldn’t use a color. However, poetry is for breaking rules and you can describe things in unusual ways. This particular way of describing something is called synesthesia” write synesthesia on the board. “synesthesia is using one sense to describe another. For example, you could call something a stinky green or say it felt like fireworks. Fireworks aren’t something you touch, are they? But they give you a feeling. By saying something felt like fireworks, we are saying that the something gave us the samfirse feeling fireworks do.”

·         Read “Jilted” by Sylvia Plath:

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,

                My tears like vinegar,

Or the bitter blinking yellow

                Of an acetic star

Tonight the caustic wind, love,

                Gossips late and soon,

And I wear the wry-faced pucker of

                The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,

                Puny, green, and tart,

Droops upon its wizened stem

                My lean, unripened heart.

o   Ask them if there are any words they don’t know (there will be a lot, so explain to them what the poem is about first. If you want, you can substitute easy words for the words they don’t understand then read it again so it’s easier for them).

o   Look at the line “

o   Bring around some vinegar for them to smell

o   Ask the children how the vinegar smelled and how it made them feel

o   Plath’s tears were not like vinegar in smell or taste; they were like vinegar in how they made her feel. She reacted to her tears how she reacted to the vinegar.

·         Give the children time to practice using unusual descriptions. Tell them they can write a whole poem or just descriptions. Ask them to share when they’re finished.

·         “If you think about Plath’s poem, there are one or two colors she uses over and over. What are they?” [yellow and green]

·         Colors are a great way to express emotion. What do Plath’s colors mean?

·         What colors would you pair with emotions? Offer the children emotions first like anger, sadness, etc.

·         Give the children time to write a poem that focuses on one color. When they’re finished, ask if anyone wants to share.

·         Using colors to express feelings works especially well in painting. Show them the poster and ask the children what kind of mood it sets.

·         “Just like in poetry, you can use color to tell the reader or viewer what you are feeling. You can also use objects of the same color to set the mood. For example, you could use the night sky as a dark blue background. What are some things that go with the color ____ (pick any) that also have the same tone? Tone is the mood something sets.

·         Give the children some time to pick a color and make a drawing showing the mood for that color. Tell them it does not have to be realistic. For example, they could draw blue fire if it matches the tone they want. When they’re finished, ask if anyone wants to share.

·         Give the children time to do a portrait of someone. Tell them to pick one color to show how they feel about the person. When they’re finished, ask if anyone wants to share.

Introduction

This is a blog dedicated to my Girl Scout Gold Award Project which was a series of art and poetry camps for young girls. I'm going to share what I did in the camps here so if anyone wants to do something similar they have a guide. There were four lessons, each about two hours long, and I'll be making a post for each of them.