Have you heard of Andy Warhol?
The entire school has been learning about him over the past few weeks for an art instillation. Our class learned that he was one of the artists credited with starting “Pop” art, which stands for popular art. Through reading books, looking closely with artist eyes at his work, and using the Queensland Art Gallery kids interactive game on their website, we were able to understand him better. The link to this website is found below.
Warhol’s World Interactive Game
This was taken when we completed all the questions on the interactive game. 🙂
Did you know that Andy Warhol was actually bald and his famous white hair was a wig? He lived with his mom and a lot of cats in an old factory in New York City that he turned into his home and artist studio. He worked in an advertising agency before devoting his time completely to art. He saw advertising as art. Warhol loved Campbell’s soup and ate it every day for lunch. That’s why he made so many soup paintings!
After learning all about the artist we began to make our own “Sage Creek Soup” using words from our classroom agreement, which will be included in the school’s art installation. Kindness soup, friendly soup, helpful soup are a few names the kids came up with.
We tied our Warhol learning into our invention research by thinking about why soup is stored in cans. How do you open a soup can? Finally we examined different can openers and how they work. I admit, as a left handed person, this task was a bit tricky for me. The Super Kids thought it was hilarious that I find it tricky to open cans. I told them that many things are tricky to do when you are left handed. “Why isn’t there a left handed can opener?” one Super Kid asked. I told them I don’t know but they should invent one for me. 🙂 We also looked at the different packaging soup has now and discussed why inventors would have changed the way soup is stored.
Thanksgiving was last week and after reading many books about turkey’s escaping Thanksgiving dinner I gave the Super Kids a challenge.
Design a turkey hideout using the materials in the classroom or from home that provides shelter, camouflage, and distracts others from finding your turkey. The afternoon was spent planning and designing. Teams came up with lasers, mazes, traps, and so much more to keep their turkey safe.
A big thank you to those families that have been sending in “home inventions” for us to examine. Our goal is to try to figure out what it does by the material it’s made of and our prior knowledge. Then we try to figure out the problem it helps solve.
Did you know that the “Super Soaker” was invented by Loonie Johnson, who was an engineer that worked for NASA? He came up with the idea when trying to design a cooling system. The kids loved reading about him in the book “Whoosh!” and watching him being interviewed on the YouTube clip below.
After talking about the different between potential and kinetic energy, big science words that the kids loved, we created our own air canons with the same idea that Loonie had. Of course we didn’t use water, but paper tubes, balloons, and pom poms worked too. Would a long tube or a short tube work better? Would the size of pom pom matter? Would tying a knot in the end of the balloon help? All these questions sparked redesigns and tests. The Super Kid inventors demonstrated the design process and were able to talk about their results.
Math workshop centers focused on number sense and reader’s workshop centers focused on developing literacy skills are in full swing.
Thank you to a Super Kid’s mom, who happens to be the our human ecology teacher at our school Mrs. Dulder, for making us pillows for our reading corner. The kids loved stuffing them.
One day last week it rained a lot and then started to snow. We ended up having indoor recess because it was a huge mud pit outside. What did our class do? Design clothes, pile into the reading corner, build, and so much more.
Have a great Sunday everyone. I’m looking forward to seeing all of my Super Kids in the morning. 🙂