Projects:
- dinosaurs
- space
- pond animals
- family history
- frog study
- scientific method
- Ellis Island
- simple machines
- chess
In collaboration with the Guggenheim museum, my second grade class did a semester-long research project on pond animals. Students each chose a pond animal that they wanted to learn more about. They did weeks of work learning about their animals and the habitat as a whole. This involved in-class research work using books, magazines, and Internet research. They also did field research for this project, visiting a real pond in Central Park, interviewing a park ranger about pond animals, and participating in special programs at both the New York Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo to get more first-hand information about the plants and animals in the pond habitat.
After gathering this information, the students used this information to create an art project based on the idea that their pond animals were moving to New York City. They were given the task of designing apartments for their animals that would meet all of their animals needs in a way that would work within the confines for an apartment. For example, a student studying frogs decided to include a bathtub full of mud for her frog, as well as a fan in the window specially designed to blow bugs into the apartment so that the frog would always have plenty of bugs to eat.
Students sketched and the sculpted their animals out of clay and painted them. They designed their apartments first in sketches and then using collage on canvas boards. They then wrote letters from their pond animals to their families back in the pond telling about their new apartments in the city. Finally they wrote artists statements explaining their work and the choices they made. The finished project was presented at a family celebration in the school library.
These are letters that the students wrote to explain the choices they made in creating the apartments for their animals. In them, they explain what aspects of their apartments are designed to meet their animals' needs and also describe the materials they chose and why they chose those materials.
This is the apartment building that contains all of the apartments that my students designed for their pond animals.
These are letters that students wrote to the class from the perspectives of their pond animals. In them, they tell what their animals think and feel about their move to the city.
Below are letters that students wrote to their pond animals, giving them advice about moving to the city.
These are the sculpted pond animals that the students made, along with their "artists' statement letters" and pond animal letters.