Week 5&6 - Omega Artspace

During our fifth week of ArtSpace, we connected our earlier Laban movement lessons to a discussion of perspective and optical illusions. The students then created their own optical illusions using a checkerboard pattern and their names. After creating the outline of a checkerboard, the students wrote their names using bubble lettering, then proceeded to fill in the checkerboard with two different colors, but leaving their names blank. Afterwards, they colored in the letters of their name using the opposite color of the box each letter passed through. We spent the following meeting continuing our work on the illusions.

Our Tuesday class meeting was the only one of this past week due to parent-teacher conferences. We used this time finish up any projects that had been left undone: treasure maps, "day in the life" storyboards and the checkerboard optical illusions. Next week, on March 3rd, we will be hanging up all of the projects that have been completed for an open house, where all parents can come in and view what their children have accomplished in the first five weeks of ArtSpace. We hope to see you there!

Week 4 - Omega Artspace

Week 4 - Feb 10,12

This week at Artspace did a lesson based on movement and one based on art creativity. We introduced a couple songs to get the kids going, including Singing in the Rain and the Shark Song.

The movement lesson stems from the theory of movement analysis by Rudolf Laban. We taught the kids various movements and had them re-enact them in new situations. We followed it up with a game called the Human Machine, where kids had to work together to create a machine using only their bodies. 

For our art creativity lesson we gave the students a paper and had them draw a shape and pass the paper to the next person. Once we had four shapes drawn the students were challenged to create “a day in the life of” story, using the shapes drawn by others in their own drawing. They then took turns presenting their story to the class. They were very creative in their drawing and storytelling and did a great job.

Week 3 - Omega Artspace

This week at ArtSpace, we went on a pirate adventure that took us out of the classroom and around the Omega campus, using movement and the students' imaginations to pass obstacles in search for treasure - the finished name tags! The name tags the students during the first ArtSpace meeting have been laminated, hole punched, and have had a lanyard attached, allowing me and Adam to easily identify each student.

Following the adventure, the students began working on treasure maps that showed our journey. We spent the remainder of Tuesday's class designing the maps in pencil, while Thursday's class was spent coloring the maps. We also introduced a new game - Bird, Beast, Fish - which is a team-based game very similar to charades.


Scott and some students with their finished maps


More treasure maps