I've become intrigued with how our brain remembers color. There's lots of neurological research about how our brain processes color, but not much about how we remember it. This was the leaping off point for the current project with the grade 5's called Sky Jars. We created a jar of color that evoked a memory of the color of the sky from a favorite memory. Students were challenged with remembering and then recreating that color.

First we did a thinking routine about our summer to visualize the memory, the sky, and its color. then, using food coloring, we mixed primary colors into jars. Finally, we labelled each jar with information about the memory (place, time, and memory). The best part was naming the color; Students were challenged to come up with names that evoked the memory or place without naming the color. We ended up with Buckingham Sky, Rocky Mountain Haze, and Trouble Brewing.

After installing the artwork in the atrium, students completed a "Looking Ten-times-Two" thinking routine. This allowed them to reflect on their creating process, as well as how their memories came to form part of a larger artwork. For the past two weeks its been great to watch people walk by, stop, and read the memories.

The grade threes are engaged in a transdisciplinary unit on simple machines. In visual arts we have been looking at the complex, and not so simple, machines of Rube Goldberg.

We looked at some of his drawings as well as the OK Go video This To Shall Pass. Their culminating task will be to design and build a Rube Goldberg-like machine that links up with other machines.

After watching the video and looking at the drawings and then doing some drawing, I wanted to get students thinking about how machines could create art. We built 5 pendulums with paint bottles, artists' easels, and string. Students experimented with different weights and directions for setting the pendulum in motion. When they were ready, we set them in motion. It was very messy, but produced some wonderful results.

Students experimented with how the length of strings and different weights affected the pendulums arc. Our next step in this unit of inquiry is to translate their knowledge of different machines and the excitement of pendulum painting into artistic creations that have a whimsical element, in much the way Goldberg's drawings did.