Story Boards with Crayons!

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day… A cold, wet and gloomy day at Artspace couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm: there were more stories to be told, illustrated, and captured on video. Class began with a cut-and-paste session. Remember those painted stories from two classes ago? Tales such as the “Yellow-muscled Alien” and the “Girl Who Made Friends with A Giant” were originally painted as part of a large canvas combining many individual stories. Today students tore into those large canvases with scissors, retrieving bits and pieces of their own stories so they could reconstruct and illustrate them later on.

Second, the students continued illustrating their group-project storyboards. While many of the stories were nearing completion, many of the illustrations still contained a lot of empty white space. When there’s empty space on the paper, the best solution is a box of crayons. Out came the crayons and soon there were broad arrays of blue, orange, green, red, yellow and purple filling the gaps.

While everybody continued drawing, Mr. Ben and Mr. Matt interviewed one group at a time on camera. Students got the chance to film their storytelling efforts by talking, answering questions and pointing out how their artwork was worth a thousand words.

During all of the ArtSpace sessions to date, Mr. Ben and Mr. Matt have been filming students working, playing, creating and telling stories. In the next few days they will be piecing together all of those video clips and setting them to music in order to recount the course of Moya ArtSpace this fall. The result of this video editing effort will be on display at the Moya holiday concert, December 16 @ 6pm.

ArtSpace Moya Fall09 Storyboards from Matthew Mosher on Vimeo.

Illustrated Story Beginnings

With a round of individual storytelling under their belts, students got a chance to team up, combine their talents, and tell a much more detailed tale. But before we got down to business today, Mr. Matthew treated us to a rousing, Mad-lib-altered rendition of “Old McDonald Had A Farm” recast as “American McDonald Had a Guy.” And that “guy” made the sound “AHHHHHHHHHHHH, AHHHHHHHHHH….” Evidently, American McDonald’s guy was in pain.

The students’ tables were already covered with fresh sheets of white paper, and the task on hand was somewhat similar to the task we covered on Monday: storytelling through illustration. This time, however, students at each table worked together to create a single story, illustrate it with colored pencils and give a brief written summary. The possibilities, as always, were endless. We only asked that students somehow answer the following questions in the process of illustrating and writing down their tale: where and when is the story happening? Who is in the story? What happens in the story?

One table told the story of a day at the beach: a bunch of boys and girls decided to go to the seaside recently for an afternoon of sun and surf. But low and behold, peaceful surfing soon turned to tragedy as several sharks attacked, biting the legs of those enjoying the waves. Asked if a soundtrack accompanied their story, the students shook their heads “no,” but the presence of the “Jaws” theme was unmistakable. Fortunately, a lifeguard was on hand to warn of the danger and help treat the casualties. It was unclear whether or not the lifeguard looked like David Hasselhof.

One table over, the buildings of Springfield, Illinois were ablaze. Somebody had eliminated all of the fire extinguishers in the town. The situation looked dire: Homer, sitting idly by and eating a hamburger, had no idea what to do, and Maggie sucked on her pacifier while aloofly observing the chaos. Fortunately, Bart came to the rescue: flying down main street in an old, beat-up Ford equipped with fire-extinguishing equipment, he put out the fires and saved the day. The jury is still out as to whether Bart was the one who stole the fire extinguishers in the first place.

Paint!

Students returned from the Thanksgiving holiday with a LOT of energy, and wasted no time at all channeling that energy into artistic expression. Greeted by white paper tablecloths covering every surface, cups of primary colors and plenty of paintbrushes, students dove right in, painting a wide variety of stories directly on the table. Mr. Matthew gave a quick lesson in mixing colors: red and blue make purple, etc., and the students were off to the races. The only condition was that they be able to tell a story about their painting. The results were, as always, fantastic, funny, frightening or fabulous.

The corner of one table told the story of an alien with huge yellow muscles who had flown his spaceship from Mars to Earth in one hour! Asked if he would share his super-speed technology with us earthlings, the alien replied that information about such technology was highly classified.

Right next to the yellow-muscled alien was a very colorful princess whose parents were on vacation at the beach. With no supervision at home, the princess ran into the forest where she met a huge green monster. She quickly ran back into her castle and anxiously awaited the return of the vacationing king and queen.

A couple of tables away there appeared a large picture book. Somehow, a girl had managed to walk directly into the book. On the pages of the book lived a giant whose house was built inside a rainbow. The girl in the book decided to pick some flowers to give to the giant in the rainbow, because the giant in the rainbow was lonely. This act of floral generosity protected a lot of people from being eaten by the now-friendly giant.

Following the free painting session, students headed outside for a very spirited game of “Use or Be.” Gradually, students realized they could team up, with one person “using” the item and the other person “being” the item. As a result one student used a blender and the other student was the blender; one student was a puppet and the other student used a puppet; and one student was a nail while the other student hammered the nail. This emerging ability to act dramatically is very exciting indeed!

Get Rhythm

The last day of ArtSpace before Thanksgiving greeted students another game of rhythmic call and response. Gradually, students become much more proficient matching the rhythms set by Mr. Ben and Mr. Matt. Continued improvement in this area may allow for an upcoming performance.

Next up were the partially completed story trees, ready to be decorated with story types. The students recalled the story types that we’ve been talking about since our first session, and Mr. Matt and Mr. Ben notated the various categories on the board. Then, armed with markers and colored pencils, students decorated the branches and trunks of their trees with “fiction”, “biography”, “song”, “theater”, “romance” etc.

The individuality of these group projects gives them excellent display potential.

Third up, students were encouraged to write an account of the instrument-building process in which they had participated during the previous three sessions. Descriptions of box-cutting, rubber-band-stretching, hole-poking and color-splashing abounded. The stories, of course, will be ongoing projects, with potential for further decoration and detailed presentation.

Finally, students busted through the doors to the outdoor playground and took part in a rousing game of “huggy-bear,” spreading the love prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Story Trees

Magic markers are all the rage until something better comes along. Today something better came along: paint! And lots of it. Students began the afternoon with a group painting project, filling a large canvas with their best representation of an apple tree. Why a tree, you might ask? Since the Moya theme is “storytelling” through various media, we want to get the students thinking about various genres of stories: literature, drama, oral tradition, and the numerous sub-types within each large division. For example, within literature, one finds fiction, non-fiction, biography, mystery, history, etc. So this is where the trees come in: each of the many branches the students painted today will be linked with a particular type of story. All the branches on the tree are interconnected, just as all story types are interconnected.

Before completing the homemade instrument project, Mr. Matthew and Mr. Ben showed an inspirational instrument-making video: Mr. Rogers Goes to the Saxophone Factory. Then the full creative capacity of this ArtSpace class was unleashed on the task of decorating the box guitars that have occupied the majority of the last few classes. Paint flew, ribbons fluttered, and glue attached things together. If mess is indicative of creative effort, then we definitely set the gold standard today.

Mr. Roger's at the Saxophone factory

How the instruments got their spots

Students began class by perfecting their sponge-tossing skills. It’s incredible how fast and far a 2^nd grader can throw a sponge, especially when they’re trying to avoid achieving the game’s accuracy objective. Regardless, the game helps everybody (primarily the instructors) to better remember names.

Once the projectile sponges had stopped flying, students joined their tablemates in a game of “Exquisite Corpses”: folding a sheet of paper four times, students drew one feature of a body, such as a head, then passed the folded paper to a friend, who added a torso, or arms, or legs, or feet. The results were fantastic indeed, although the class as a whole might benefit from paper folding practice.

Finally, the students returned to building, decorating or otherwise modifying the musical instruments they had begun the week before. A large number of cardboard box guitars grew necks fashioned from popsicle sticks, glue and pipe cleaners. Some guitars also doubled the number of elastic-band strings, greatly increasing the variety of possible melodies. In a nod toward practicality, one student tacked on to her instrument a pair of carrying handles that doubled as radio antennae. And of course, once the magic markers came out of the cabinet, the drab and colorless materials out of which the instruments were built suddenly reappeared as splashes of color.

Next up: using the instruments we’ve built to play together (in harmony if possible), and storytelling with song.

The instruments begin!

A beautiful afternoon at Moya called for some outdoor play to start off the session: a game of name-calling ball toss was modified to be played with an industrial sponge, and a game of “telephone” (aka whisper down the line) resulted in the transformation of the phrase “I like chocolate and banana” into “kick me,” although one of the students might have messed with the system…

Next, students teamed up to draw fantastical musical instruments: each table received a large piece of paper with a basic shape on it, such as a circle or a square. By adding strings, pipes, mallets, ribbons, beads, speakers, mouthpieces, and jet engines, the students turned their shapes into instruments with magical powers. Some of the instruments could amplify themselves, one had a built in microphone, and one could shoot flames with deadly accuracy over great distances. The fantasy instruments are by no means complete, so stay tuned for updates on magical powers that might soon be added.

The final activity of the day, and the project that will remain a primary focus for the next few weeks, consisted of experimental instrument-making. Mr. Matthew and Mr. Ben demonstrated some of the differences between string, percussion and wind instruments, and Mr. Ben brought out his clarinet to demonstrate how a reed vibrates and makes a sound when the player blows hard enough. Students worked on cardboard-box guitars, pipe-cleaner tambourines, and drinking-straw oboes. A wild cacophony of melodious and percussive sounds ensued, as usual.

Next up: improvements and updates to home-made instruments, as well as ensemble music performed on soda cans and cardboard boxes.

Halloween and Shakers

As soon as students sat down at their tables for the second day of ArtSpace, they were confronted by colored squares of paper with ovals drawn on them. Passing the paper squares around the table, each student added a single facial feature at a time until the ovals turned into wildly colored, scary, funny, sad or happy faces. Then students played a game of call-and-response drumming: at first they tried responding before they had even heard the “call,” but then realized how important it is to listen to the drum-beat before trying to mimic it.

The second activity of the day presented the students with special storytelling “wands.” Although many students thought these wands looked like cardboard tubes, they didn’t realize that the wands held magical powers: when a person holds the storytelling wand, he or she is transformed into the storyteller, and everyone else is transformed into a quietly attentive audience. With the help of the storytelling wands, students narrated exciting, scary, funny and strange stories about Halloween. Stories ranged from “My trip to Fear Farm” to “Aliens vs. Zombies” to “Swarm of costumed trick-or-treaters takes over Peter Piper Pizza.”

The main activity of the day involved Dixie cups, paper disks, beads and duct tape. What artistic masterpiece would be created out of such a diverse array of materials, you may ask? Students soon found themselves deeply involved in the creation of percussion instruments. They put beads in a Dixie cup, affixed a makeshift lid using a paper disk and a couple pieces of duct tape, and voila: shakers! The class then participated in another round of call-and-response drumming, using shakers instead classroom tables.

Next up: more instrument building.

Session One - 11/02/09

Close to 30 second, third and fourth graders showed up to the first day of ArtSpace at Moya, excited and ready to learn. Right from the start, everybody joined in a game of “Use or Be.” Mr. Ben demonstrated how to “use” a lawnmower by pulling a pretend rip-cord, revving an imaginary engine and cutting some make-believe grass. Soon the entire classroom was full of students driving or riding or pushing lawnmowers. Then Mr. Matthew demonstrated how to “be” a lawnmower and almost instantaneously the entire classroom was full of whirring lawnmower blades. After only a few minutes, the grass in that classroom was very short.

Next, the students began working on nametags. They chose paper and magic markers from a variety of colors and decorated their first and last names with favorite numbers, animals, plants and foods. The nametag project is ongoing, and Mr. Matthew and Mr. Ben will have their hands full learning the names of all of their students.

The main project of the day required a little bit of introduction: Mr. Matthew made a list on the board of storytelling elements such as “setting,” “characters,” “audience,” etc. Then the students broke into smaller groups of 4-6, chose a setting (such as “the sky” or “a castle), characters (such as “bird” or “clown”) and created a short play that they presented in front of the entire class. The dramatic presentations included “A Game of Tag,” “Thumb-war on a Volcano,” and “Fire-breathing Dragon Cooks Chicken in Mid-Air.” Each group was heartily applauded and took multiple bows.

Coming up next time: tales from Halloween.

New arts after-school program at Moya Elementary!

Join the ArtSpace after-school program!

Explore storytelling, art and music.

Use digital camera and video.

Record your own sounds.

Build your own instruments.

Make your own music.

Design your own costumes.

Act out your favorite characters.

Put on a parade.

Draw a comic book.

Create different types of stories.

Discover how different cultures tell stories.

Combine all of these elements into a final storytelling event and show everybody how much fun it is to make art!