Underground Railroad

This is a 5th grade project! Projects in the Cass room! We made posters and were introduced to the Civil war, the underground railroad, and also some key people involved in them. We divided into 6 groups and we were able to star some very creative posters! The students loved thinking of creative ways to show off their skills! And also get ready to share their books with the class. We did not finish but next week we will be done!

Jan 1, 2012 Good Morning! We have undertaken a wonderful project for the Arts Bridge Program. This is a program that has been set up by a wonderful donor who knows the importance of Arts in the classroom. Our job as educators is to go into the schools and teach the teachers how to implement art within the curriculum. There are wonderful hidden secrets in teaching Fractions, English, and Science, History or any other subject with art!

Our first project is History and to introduce the Civil War, it can be so exciting to learn and the students are so creative. They also know about war today, it is in the news every day and so we will talk about how it makes us feel today to be involved in war. That is going to be similar to those who were in the Civil war. It was fun to hear that some of the students understood the Underground railroad were paths to freedom and people that stood up to help slaves escape their slavery life.

Jan 14, 2012 We are going to make small quilts for the Underground railroad, we needed materials, we had students bring in old t-shirts, and scraps to put together. We had some parent volunteers come and help as well! We met in the morning and we ironed on wonder under and started cutting the squares. I will post the lesson plan soon!

Parent helpers are the best! They sacrifice so much so that the students can have a great opportunity of learning!

This group painted on their pictures, and thought out their border and what their story was about. They made grass out of an old green shirt and more.

This student is a great artist and decided
to hand draw the images on the poster
they are working on.

One of the students talked about how dolls were important to the slaves, and others wanted to make a doll like the slaves did, while others wanted to make quilts on their posters. It was overall a wonderful day in the fifth grade class

This next poster is going to have sticks, and other fun outdoor things on it. They are making a border to go around the sides out of balsa wood.

This group wanted to make a quilt to go on their poster, one student sat for a long time sewing two squares together. They were cutting, sewing, designing and thinking about the projects and how to create them.

The poster here is going to be a 3-D sort of poster, the students are making a doll to go with their book. The other girls came over and said they wanted to make a doll to go with their posters too, one student said "You cant you don't have a doll in your story" They were protective of their art work!

This poster is written with sticks and painted and also has other elements on it. The students are so creative and work hard together.

We finished our quilt squares today, with the help of wonderful mothers and they turned out beautiful! We will be having a show at the JKB Jessey Knight Building at Brigham Young University to display all our 5th graders hard work! We will post as it gets closer!
Here they are! They turned out great, and each one is beautiful!

We had at least 5-8 parent helpers today as we put together the quilts and they went really fast, the students did super! I cant wait for the parents to see the projects that the students have been working on! Its really exciting!

Here we are already on Feb 21. I went to the school today and met with the teacher and also talked to the students about our final art show! They are so excited and we are going to have it at the JKB on March 5, 2012.
This will hang on the 5th floor and the students are way excited to see the show and have their families see it as well!

We will be meeting on Monday and we are going to work on clay beads, and talk a little about the history of clay and beads. The students love to learn and they are excited to see the finished projects and reward of their hard works!

A local High School student drew this today. It is a story about loss. I thought that it fit with our lessons on the Civil war, though their losses were huge, with families on either side of the war, and the slaves being torn apart. Families sold and so we will talk about the influences of war on us today. History is part of us each day. During the Civil war many people were lost, and families were divided I thought this would be a good illustration to use. She said sure we could use it. Even little things that we loose are important and teach us.