Jayashree Kumar: Visiting Artist

Jayashree Kumar is an Indian classical dance teacher working on spreading the rich Indian culture and heritage. She is passionate about teaching dance to anyone who is interested.  Mrs. Kumar began with a presentation on the temples and dances of India. Kindergarten, Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary and Middle School students learned about the history  and elements of Indian dance from both the North and South regions of India. Mrs. Kumar shared that Abinaya is an integral part of all Indian classical dance styles and includes rhythmic expression of moods, emotions and narrative using Mudra (hand gestures), Bhanga (postures of the body), and Rasa (facial expressions).

After the presentation students learned  a dance in the Bharatanatyam tradition, which is the Indian dance Mrs. Kumar specializes in. At the end of the dance lesson children had the opportunity to try on jewelry and clothing worn by Indian dancers, Mehndi, which is applying Henna to the skin for different celebrations and life events, and Bindis.

 

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Lexi Perkins: Visiting Artist

Last Tuesday we welcomed visiting artist, Lexi Perkins. Ms. Perkins’ intuitive and automatic process begins with simple mark making. Usually, she begins with a series of fluid, interwoven contour lines that loosely reference human faces and figures. She then adds facial features and other details to highlight the forms she sees. Her drawings illustrate the interconnectedness of people, and the complex, diverse emotions we all experience.

The children began the lesson by practicing their continuous line drawing. Ms. Perkins instructed students to draw slowly and to keep their sharpie marker on the paper without lifting it up.

After practicing the children were given watercolor paper and a sharpie marker to create their final continuous line. Ms. Perkins then instructed the children to look closely at the shapes their continuous line had created to see if it would make a good place to draw in an eye, a hand or maybe a mouth.

Finally, the children were given ink and asked to paint their shapes.

Erika Roberts: Visiting Artist

Last week Lamplighter had the privilege of welcoming local watercolor artist Erika Roberts to our campus for a day long workshop exploring the beauty of watercolor paintings. Mrs. Roberts is a mixed media artist whose work primarily explores different avenues of the southern landscape. In her workshop, Mrs. Roberts shared the wonder of watercolor and oil pastels with our students as they created their own Memphis skyline paintings.

Our morning started with Mrs. Roberts giving a formal presentation about herself and her work, sharing with our students the progression of abstract to completely recognizable content, followed by very eager questions from all of our students. Immediately after Mrs. Roberts conducted customized workshops for our students from Early Childhood all the way to Upper Elementary.

Upper and Lower Elementary classes each had sessions where Mrs. Roberts gave a formal demonstration and assisted with students as they created a skyline of their very own. With the usage of oil pastels, students were able to see the merger of oil and water as their paintings took shape. As she made her rounds to all of the children, Mrs. Roberts provided a brief introduction into the connection between color and emotion, demonstrating how saturation and hue can provide incredible insight into how an artist was feeling when they produced their work.

Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Roberts welcomed our Early Childhood students into the MakerSpace for a less formal exploration of watercolors. Students were provided stencils to jumpstart their skylines and then allowed color and water to breathe life into their paintings. We are incredibly fortunate at Lamplighter to have had such a specialized artist come and share their knowledge and skillset with our students, who in every account blossomed in the room as each workshop took place.

Mary Hall Surface: Visiting Artist

We are so grateful to the Orpheum for choosing Lamplighter Montessori School as a teaching site for their workshop, “A Playful Approach to Writing”. Internationally-recognized playwright Mary Hall Surface has been a teaching artist for over 30 years, and we were excited to experience one of her lessons.

Upper Elementary and Lower Elementary classes each had their own workshop session, which started with Mrs. Surface having them cup their hands and imagine holding something from their home. They turned to a partner and described their objects in five descriptive words. This exercise gave students the foundation of how imaginative and detailed they would be getting in the session!

Mrs. Surface then broke students up into groups of three, giving them a rolled up piece of paper to use as an object – any object. Stop for a second and imagine what your object might be. This was not a guessing game – it was an act of storytelling. Students took the paper and wordlessly acted out a story – beginning, middle, and end – not just a simple action. Another friend from their group then described what had happened in the story.

Everyone came back together for instructions on the second draft of their story – adding a conflict. It’s a great start to have your roll of paper be a hockey stick as you score a winning goal for your team, but what if… Students brainstormed possible conflicts, then broke back into small groups to act out their latest draft. Group mates interpreted the actions once again and identified the conflict.

The third draft of the story involved changing who was involved. Many students were acting as themselves, but what if you were suddenly a professional hockey player during the last two minutes of the championship game? How would you feel? What if you slipped on the ice? What emotions would we think the player would feel? What might be a resolution? How would different resolutions make him feel?

Students transformed rolled-up paper into creative objects that sparked fascinating stories. They put their ideas in a graphic organizer to explore later in class and MakerSpace. The session was a great exercise in imagination, storytelling, and empathy. Thank you again to the Orpheum and Mary Hall Surface for this experience!

Celebrating Memphis

We were excited to have the World Cargo Crate from Memphis in May at our school this week! We want to learn more about Memphis so we can help celebrate its bicentennial.

Each class learned about different aspects of Memphis, from the history of businesses like Piggly Wiggly and FedEx, to information about the riverboats and railroads.

We learned about the Memphis Belle and compared it with a model of a FedEx plane. We tried to lift a cobblestone and highlighted the contrasting textures when we touched the cotton.

We learned about Yellow Fever, got All Shook Up with Elvis, and listened to a sampling of tracks recorded at Stax. We asked each other Memphis trivia questions, and shared our favorite things about our city.

Thanks so much for choosing our school to host the World Cargo Crate, Memphis in May! We are excited to continue to learn about and celebrate our city this year.

Sydney Prather: Visiting Artist

Today’s Visiting Artist was our very own Sydney Prather! Ms. Sydney helps in Toddler classes and with After Care, so she’s a familiar face at our school. Many students didn’t know that Ms. Sydney’s passion is Musical Theater, and that she has 15 years experience as an actress, and 5 years as a director and choreographer. She gave presentations about musical theater before holding customized workshops for students from Early Childhood to Upper Elementary!

Ms. Sydney led character study sessions for Early Childhood students. They listened to “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” from the Lion King and identified the different characters they heard, as well as the emotions that came across in the vocals. Students practiced expressing different emotions vocally and through facial expressions. Then they walked to the music, first as themselves, then as different animals. It was so fun to move our bodies in ways we have seen and imagined animals doing! Check out how well they moved on Facebook.

Later in the day, kindergarteners had a chance to expand on this animal movement lesson. They learned moves Ms. Sydney choreographed especially for them! Check out the video of their routine on Facebook.

Lower and Upper Elementary students learned a dance created by Ms. Sydney, piece by piece. They made sure their faces were expressive while they followed the steps. They learned about staging as they put it all together and performed “Revolting Children” from Matilda the Musical. Teachers and staff were invited to see their final performance, which you can see on Facebook.

Bonus: Ms. Sydney is starting a musical theater club at Lamplighter! Lower and Upper Elementary students can enroll. The club will meet Thursdays from 3:30-5:00pm, from January 10th to May 2nd. You can sign up online at bit.ly/MusicalTheaterClub.

Starting Our Paper Study

[[Note: It’s been quiet on the blog, but busy in MakerSpace! This post was originally supposed to go up on September 28th… whoops!]]

Our Scarecrow Study wrapped up after we talked about shapes we see in art and everyday life. Even though we used over 9,000 round sequins, we created a different shape and structure from them! Students read I Spy Shapes in Art by Lucy Micklethwait, and we took some time to notice all the shapes around us, and what smaller shapes made up larger structures.

This carried over into the start of our Paper study. We used colored paper to make collages, using only our fingers to tear the paper – no scissors! It was challenging but fun to try and rip paper into the exact shapes we wanted. We quickly learned that if you can’t tear the shape you want, you can tear small pieces and glue them into a specific shape on your paper!

Early Childhood classes read Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter, and Lower and Upper Elementary classes read Drawing with Scissors by Jane O’Connor.

Through these books, we learned how Matisse created collages by cutting shapes from painted paper. This inspired us to use scissors for our next set of collages. Matisse is our Artist Study for the Fall gallery show, so you’re seeing our bright, bold collage-inspired paintings when you walk into the school!

 

Chuck Jones, Songwriter: Visiting Artist

Singer/songwriter Chuck Jones visited Lamplighter School to teach students how to write songs. As always, the best way to learn is by doing, so we now have three hit songs under our belts! Songwriting pulls from various creative outlets – in addition to musical talent, one can also be skilled with words and language and craft a beautiful song. Our students learned that they can write a song about anything, with some loose guidelines and space to let their imagination roam.

Mr. Jones explained to each class some background of songwriting, like deciding on a theme or idea, and then picking a style for the music (country, rock ‘n’ roll, etc), a tempo (is it upbeat or slow?), and loosely planning the structure of the song. One song had a more traditional style of a verse followed by a chorus, a second verse, and a repeat of the chorus. Another started with the chorus, then had a verse before repeating the chorus again. One song didn’t really have a chorus, but instead repeated one of the catchy verses to finish it out. There are so many different ways to write a song!

Upper Elementary students brainstormed about what they like to do, and it came up that recess is their favorite part of the day. Mr. Jones taught them how to pick a word or phrase to be the “hook” of the song, and how to structure a chorus around that. With a song like “Recess”, students decided they wanted to have the verses follow the course of the school day. Mr. Jones said it was sometimes easiest to start with rhyming words and work backwards, so they would find a good word like “grammar” and put it at the end of a line, then think of a rhyming word to end the next line. Listen to their song here!

Lower Elementary students wanted to write about something they were excited about, which was tonight’s “Kid’s Night Out”! The theme of the night is building, so they started writing about things they like to build, works they like to do in MakerSpace, and other fun activities they love at school. Some of their word choices had great rhyming words (perfect rhymes), but some were a bit harder, until Mr. Jones explained “soft rhymes”, which are words that are similar but don’t exactly rhyme. When the song was finished, all the students sang along! Listen to them sing along!

Kindergarten students also got to write a song! After lunch, they were wound up and couldn’t focus on just one idea, so they went with the general theme of “Silly”! You can imagine how loud the room got while students came up with silly words and sounds and couldn’t hold their laughter in! They loved Mr. Jones’ guitar playing, and kept asking him to switch from county to rock ‘n’ roll, so their song is definitely a silly mash-up of styles that will have you laughing and singing along! Listen to it here!

We’d like to send a huge THANK YOU to Chuck Jones for giving his time to our school and inspiring our students! They absolutely came alive during these sessions, and it is inspiring for them to see working artists making a living from the creative lives they love.

Why We Make

The Montessori environment is all about learning by doing and bringing learning to life, so it’s the perfect platform to apply the “Maker Movement”. Students are learning by doing in the classroom, and creatively learning by making in MakerSpace.

MakerSpace provides open-ended inquiry opportunities for students. They are able to combine art, science, technology, and engineering to demonstrate their knowledge creatively, while enhancing their hands-on classroom curriculum.

For example, when Upper Elementary students were studying the continents and plate tectonics, they used their MakerSpace Open Lab time to expand the classroom lesson. Students created outlines of the continents with blocks, then used blocks of different sizes and colors to map out the convergent and divergent plates.

With my background in Library Science, it was natural to develop the position into that of a MakerSpace Librarian. That means Lamplighter’s MakerSpace is based more on STREAM – Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, and Math – than just STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).

In Early Childhood classes, we use books as jumping off points for the lesson. Sometimes the book fits the subject we’re working on, like reading Scarecrow by Cynthia Roland when we were designing our school’s Scarecrow Contest submission, or reading Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter when we learned about Matisse. But sometimes the books are the basis of our exploration in MakerSpace that week, like reading Perfect Square by Michael Hall, and then letting our imaginations run wild with our own squares of paper.

In Lower and Upper Elementary classes, we often use books for background information and research, but also we have read books aloud to inspire our lessons. We read Fold Me a Poem by Kristine O’Connell George while we studied origami in MakerSpace and they studied poetry in the classroom. The book is full of poems about the art of origami, so after reading the poems out loud, practicing our expressive speaking voices, students wrote their own poems, shared them with the class, and then wrote them on origami paper before folding them up into an origami creation.

We have seen a jump in student enthusiasm and love of learning. The MakerSpace has been a catalyst for change, and we see that students are thinking more creatively in the classroom. Lessons learned in the classroom are being reinforced and explored in different ways in MakerSpace, and vice versa.

Abstract thinking students are able to learn on their level and have increased the scope to demonstrate their knowledge. Montessori allows us to reach students on any level, so MakerSpace goes hand-in-hand with this to ensure that all students are engaged in their lessons.

The Grand Scarecrow Finale

After learning so much from our Visiting Artist, Youngblood Studio, students were more than ready to work on the school scarecrow. The studio sent back 4 composite drawings and we had students vote on what scarecrow they would most like to make.

We voted anonymously and then predicted what scarecrow we thought would win. Though the votes were fairly evenly distributed, number 4 won!

Youngblood Studio let us upcycle leftover shop materials to create our scarecrow body. We dedicated a day to applying over 9,000 sequins to our owl form! Every student had an opportunity to help out, so our scarecrow is truly a team effort!

We named our scarecrow owl “Dr. Hoo”, and Youngblood Studio delivered him to Lichterman Nature Center for us.

The very next day, we were informed that Dr. Hoo had won 1st place in the Best Critter category! All of the students are so proud, and excited to go see him in the wild. The win was a great way to wrap up our scarecrow project, and we can’t wait to have him live on our campus after Lichterman’s exhibit closes in November.