Oksan Winter Camp- The Rainbow Fish...

4th Grade:

On the last day with the kiddos, I got an 80 minute block with each of the classes. This allowed me to do a longer lesson, which when doing art is sometimes the easiest to do.

I introduced new color words to the kids like I had with the kids at my school camp, but this time I had found colored paper in the colors that they were learning. I made squares of the colored paper and gave each student the collection of squares. Then, they had to find the colored square to match the color, glue it into their sketch book, and write the name next to it. I thought it worked out well. It gave the students something to do, and kept them on task while learning new vocabulary words.

The colors that they learned: 

burgundy, scarlet, salmon, fuschia, hot pink, coral, peach, rust, amber, vanilla, mustard, chartreuse, mint, olive, navy, teal, indigo, violet, lavender, eggplant, caramel, beige, and bronze.

My example rainbow fish...

   

             The project: The Rainbow Fish
I first started this project by reading the book. Since this school had a large budget to work with, I was able to order in 6 copies of the books for the kids to share among themselves. After the first 2 classes though, unfortunately I recognized that they were not able to understand the vocabulary of the book, so I used a power-point with easier vocabulary and it worked great!
After the book, we went over the parts of the fish. (fin, body, head, tail, eye, scale....) Then it was time to start the project... I gave them some fish shape ideas to encourage the students to use their imagination and create their own fish shape!

fish body ideas...

I had the students draw an outline of the fish in pencil first and trace over it with black marker. Then they colored in the head and tail with their colored pencil/crayon type things (I still haven't figured out what to call these in English).

I let the student pick out different colors of shiny paper that they would use to cut out the shapes that would end up being their scales. Most kids choose multiple colors. This was most likely because of the example that I put on the board....

They they were able to cut out their scales and start to glue them on their fish! It was really exciting and rewarding to look at all the different types and colors of fish! I love individuality! I had students that drew fish with extreme teeth. I had students that made small fish. I had students that made sharks. I even had a student that made a fish with a 6 pack... (more on that later...)

After they finished their fish, I had them cut them out of the paper and glue them into their sketchbooks. They also were required to drawn a scene and without prompting, I was excited about some of the creativity that was displayed! The fish bowl was pure genius! Why can't I teach these kids all the time again? I was impressed to say the least!

Now back to the abs... This is actually a funny story.
At the beginning of the week, I was warned that there was a student that likes to make everything very muscly! Jake told me that anything that the student was required to draw would end up with a 6 pack and tons of muscles. I forgot about this, and which student was the muscle-crazed one until class on Thursday! All of a sudden I put 2 and 2 together when I looked down and saw a fish with an amazing set of abs and pectoral muscles. I had to take a picture to show Jake that he was correct with his prediction!

Jinbo & Andong Ice Festival

Ben and I both had an extra vacation day that we weren't using for our upcoming Philippines/Malaysia trip so we took off the Monday from school and had a long weekend. Originally the plan was to go up to Jinbo for one night and then we would go on to Taebek,  home of the Taebek snow festival, but that all changed.

We found some things to do in Jinbo while we were there. We went for a walk down to the river. It was frozen over, so we made our own ice festival there, and called it Jinbo Ice Festival...

We slid rocks along the ice and tried to hit other ones for points. I lost. I wouldn't think of Ben as competitive, but he doesn't lose very often at things. I also don't lose very often, but I am finding myself losing much more often since I met this guy... (We played poker a few weeks ago with a group of 10 and we came in first and second- don't want to say who came in second...;)

The highlight of our Jinbo Ice festival, was when Ben carried a large rock to the top of the bridge and threw it off to see if the ice would crack. It didn't. The rock lodged itself inside the ice. Oh small town life. The things you do for a little entertainment...

When we finally managed to persuade ourselves to go to Andong to get the bus to Taebek, it was too late. The bus was sold out and the next one was not for 8 hours and would have not given us enough time there...soooooo, we stayed in Andong.

Ben had heard of an Andong ice festival, but it was not advertised very much. We managed to get enough information for various people and took a bus to the location. (it was a bit out of town)

There we found a river that was frozen with hundreds- maybe thousands of Koreans standing/sliding/gliding/falling on the ice! There were metal ice sleds that you could rent and scoot yourself around on the ice. I couldn't believe it but they gave everyone (including toddlers) wooden sticks with nails coming out of the end to stab the ice to propel you forward! I was expecting to see a bloody massacre and whole in feet everywhere, but I didn't see any blood!!!???

We did see a couple of remote control cars pulling kids in sleds on the ice...lazy parents!

There was also ice fishing at this ice festival. Many people were squatting down around these tiny holes in the ice trying to catch their prize. I was so interested in what they were actually catching, but come to find out- they were catching fish the size of minnows! So they were just squatting there for hours to catch minnows, to catch more fish maybe?? I don't know...

Okay, we had to try out the ice sled... It was a must! With both of us working together we could go pretty fast. Ben got to the point where he could spin up around pretty fast. With more time I think we could have gotten pretty efficient with our travel! :)

What are you lookin' at???

Some days it bothers me more than others...

This weekend I had a day that the stares and the looks just got to me. I really should be used to it by now. I know when people are looking at me, and I can feel the stares most of the time when I am out in public. Especially if I am doing something that is not the cultural norm here like running outside. Or I guess just running in general...

This day in particular, people were watching me like a hawk! During lunch out with co-workers from another school's camp, everything I put in my mouth was noted. My chopstick skills were critiqued, even after I had just cut out a bit of kimchi pancake in two swift strokes. I thought I had just aced it, but instead was told I was "like a baby..." That gets old... After it was also noted to all that I wasn't eating the huge parts of fat on my meat, I was then told that I didn't eat enough and more food, that I wasn't particularly fond of was placed on my plate...

Then later traveling on a bus to Andong, I spent a good 40 minutes with a very strong stare placed on me from an Ajumma lady sitting across the isle. Not sure she looked away the whole time....In those situations I just want to do something really outrageous to really shock them. I feel like an caged animal that has escaped...

The next bus, I was enjoying some of my homemade chex mix that I had made. The lady in the bus seat behind me was so curious what I was doing, that she stood up in her seat and just starting peering over the seat! WHAAAAAT do you want??? Seriously?

These were just a few of the main instances. All days have MANY minor encounters at all moments of the day.

Most days, I embrace it, and think about all of the annoying things that I most likely do, that I don't even realize. Some days, it gets to me.

This comic I stole says it perfectly... :)

Oksan Winter Camp- Pop Art & Scratch Art

4th Grade:

I was asked to do a friend's school camp, and since it provided a little bit of extra cash and I would have been sitting at my desk at my school most likely doing nothing, I decided to do it...

I'm glad I did because this school is RICH! Unlike my school, the funding for camp had not been cut, but instead they had a huge budget. I was told that I could get whatever I wanted in terms of supplies. Because of my art background, I got to teach art as well. Other subjects offered in English were math, science, music and P.E. 

So...there were 4 classes of about 18 kids who would go to each subject each day. Quite the camp experience... I would say that these kids should consider themselves lucky! 

First day I taught the kids about Andy Warhol and the Pop Art Movement. I used the same lesson that I had just used with the 5th grade camp at my school. I knew that it took some time, so I rushed through a lot of the information so the kids would have time to work on their art. 

The next day I taught the kids about patters. We went over the vocabulary: stripes, polka dots, checks, plaid, floral, paisley, zig zags, and animal print. Here in Korea, my co-teacher told me that they don't really have distinct names for a lot of the patterns so I knew all of these words would be new to the kids.

After doing a worksheet in their custom made printed out workbook, I introduced scratch art to them. Now, I would have thought that they had done this before, but from their looks of amazement...this was not the case.  I had them section off 8 different spaces that they were to then make the patterns in section. 

This activity worked like a dream! I was bored out of my mind. I talked for the first 10-15 minutes and then let them work. They worked so hard, and basically silently. It is hard to explain how insanely great this worked. I would stand up ever few minutes to walk around and make sure everyone was on task and doing okay, and they were always doing great, no questions, and just scratching away! Dare I say I checked my facebook during class as a result of this great participation? 

Towards the end of class, most of the students weren't quite finished and I would tell them that they needed to start cleaning up, and no one would move. They wanted to finish so bad. They even used their 10 minute break in between classes to work on it. Sue, who was in charge of the camp walked in at one point and started laughing because she caught me say, "Ok, guys you HAVE to go. You HAVE to put your sketchbooks away and go to the next class!" ahah! I think that means you found a good lesson!

I definitely will remember the excitement that the scratch art brought. It wasn't too expensive when you think about it. Each students paper cost about 500 Won, which is about 50 cents. For regular school, when you have 150 students in each grade this could be a problem, but for camps that have a limited about of students, I think it is a great activity!

SUCCESS! 

2014...

I have no idea what 2014 has in store for me, but by golly I am sure looking forward to it! I have been blessed with such an incredible opportunity to live and teach in Korea, great friends new and old from all over the World, a very supportive family, and people I really care about in my life!

I've made my Korean bucket list and have started to cross things off! I plan on crossing them all off in due time!  

BRING IT ON! :)