September Fun

We've gotten off to a great start this year, and we've been enjoying the last of the summer sun with some quality outdoor time. But that hasn't prevented us from getting some great art projects in as well!

One of my favorites so far has been the apple dolls. Spawning from some strange House game involving one mother, three babies (alternating due to there being only three baby swings) and one three year old (oh my goodness, this mother must be out of her mind), this was a child-created and totally self-driven art activity the girls came up with when the "three year old" (one of our second graders) wanted to go to the mall and buy a dolly.

Using fallen crab apples from a tree in our "woods," the girls constructed dolls like these. The prototypes consisted of one apple as a head and a stick that just happened to have multiple limb-like outcroppings. When it became apparent that these sticks would be few and far between, the dolls evolved into the more sophisticated apple doll you see here.

This doll was created by one of our fifth graders, and is shown here wearing an amazing autumn colored leaf dress. It's all the rage this season. Berries found in the woods were used as eyes, and I believe she carved the smile in with her finger nail.

The hair is absolutely my favorite part, and it's made from dead vines that had wrapped around larger branches in the woods. Picking out the best curls for the dolls was a ton of fun.

Our student happened across this bird feather and we thought the doll could use a little more adornment. Here's a great shot of how the body looks pre-runway fashion items.

And a close up of the eyes and mouth.

At the end of the day we left her outside; we figured she had at least four more great hours of play left in her and we hope someone had fun with her!

For those days we haven't been able to get outside, we've been keeping busy in the classroom. One of the most popular, and one of our open-ended projects this month, has been the perler beads. We love this project because all students can participate in it, no matter what their age is, and they can feel like they've succeeded in making a beautiful art project. Our older students frequently make intricate patterns, or even entirely different shapes and objects on the perler forms.

Our younger ones find they can fill the pre-existing form with whatever colors they find appealing and still have something lovely in the end.

A quick trip under some wax paper and a hot iron and the perler beads melt into one another and become a permanent decoration. If the students don't want to bring them home they simply return the beads to the stash and reuse them for a different project.

The perler beads have been a perpetual favorite, but another open-ended activity we've brought in for September uses one of our favorite mediums - felt.

We've used felt for many, many things, but this time we've chosen to make magnets from the felt, using thin, discarded advertisement magnets - easily cut into smaller pieces - glued to the backs of our felties.

Many of our students actually chose to blend the activities, and use the perler forms to trace and create the basic shape of their magnets. Then they embellished them with additional pieces of felt, sequins, markers, googly-eyes, and whatever else they want to add.

I believe this small child magnet is walking a giant cat magnet. We strive to never submit to the norm in our pursuit of art.

Its face is very cute though.

But wait a minute! Not nearly as cute as this face. This is Chance, as we read on her collar, and she just happened to show up, sans leash or owner, to spend some time with us while we got in touch with her family and waited for them to arrive. Perhaps she inspired that white catdog?

Terribly cute!

Some more felt projects:

But wait...there's more....

We've also had some fun making dolls out of yarn. The head and body are made separately, stuffed with poly fill, and then hotglued together (because sewing them together is just too Frankenstein for us). Afterward, we decorate the face and make some hair, which is also glued nicely to the head.

This is a fun doll to customize, using buttons that correspond to eye color and great "hair cuts" that mimic our own. The one pictured above is the spitting image of a favorite aunt. That's how we roll.

When we aren't busying ourselves with art projects, we've been reading C.S. Lewis' The Magicians Nephew out loud as a group. We voted on it at the beginning of the month and everyone's really enjoying it. They're looking forward to hearing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe next. The students have also been taking turns looking through a list of September words I pulled together and choosing one each day to be our Word of the Day. The student writes the word on our white board, along with its part of speech and definition, and it's a great way to get everyone involved and to expand our vocabularies. Some of the words we've used this month have been:

• Epoch


• Mortified


• Skeptical


• Wallop


• Whimsical


• Xenophobia


• Atone


• Balk

We're looking forward to learning more fun words this month and pulling together a list for October. Maybe we'll make it Spook-tacular! We can provide you with a complete list of words, and will pull together a Boyd Dictionary at the end of the year. What fun!