4th and 5th Grade Bottle Cap Mural

 Why does it seem like it's been such a long time since I've posted a bottle cap project? It's because it has been a really long time since I've done one! I had wall space picked out in my school last year when I was approached by our  local Dublin branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library to create a piece for them. I thought it sounded like a capital idea. The library had very specific ideas for the content of their mural, so I had students submit sketches. That is as far as it got. Between having a spring quarter student teacher and getting busy with my art show, it just never happened.

I finally got in gear this year. All in all, I decided I liked the idea of doing bottle cap murals every other year. It is such a huge, time consuming project that it just makes more sense not to do it every year. With the new format, I included both 4th and 5th grade students. 

I run this mural as a side project for early finishers at the beginning. After compiling several of the best sketches, I drew out the design on the boards that students had primed. Over the course of a couple of weeks, students paint the background with latex house paint. They then clean up paint edges with a super thick black marker once all of the painting is finished. At that point, the mural is ready for caps. I have each table of students help apply caps using a hot glue gun. When a board is finished, I screw in the caps with these screws. Luckily I had lots of help with the screws this year because my contact at the library recruited her staff to lend a hand.

5th Grade Stop Motion Progress

Animating gummy bears who come out of a
lake and build a village out of dominos. 

This groups is animating lego people on a moon base.
The background is made from a cardboard box and construction paper.

New year, new way of doing a stop motion animation project. This is the fourth year I've undertaken this project with my 5th graders. It is the project that all other kids in the school look at in awe and can't wait to do. In the past, I've just had one digital camera, so I was somewhat limited as to my options for filming. I split the class up into different job groups and they all worked together to make one animation. The work always came out great, but I felt like there wasn't enough freedom. 

This year, I spent a chunk of my budget to get three more cameras and tripods. Each of my 5th grade classes broke up into four groups. Each group gets to write, design, and animate their own stop motion project. Since modeling clay for 100 kids could get out of control cost-wise, all of the animations are being done with other materials this year. I have groups animating with legos, candy, paper, etc. The pictures above were taken during the first day of filming this week. 

I'll post the finished animation in a few weeks. We still have a couple more weeks of filming along with editing in iMovie. That is another change for this year. In the past, I've always edited the whole project myself. I'm nervous/hopeful/excited about the potential results. I can't wait to show them off.