The interactive adventure begins in a 16th century French parlor with a cryptic note explaining details to escape the mansion. Clicking on different areas of the image reveal verbal clues at the bottom of the screen and open doorways to gain entry into the next room.  Your students will enjoy the challenge escaping the labyrinth of rooms using the clues found along the way.

Escape from Thorne Mansion could be easily integrated with a study of linear perspective, composition, or design.  Alternatively, create a literature connection at school or at home incorporating the book, The Sixty-eight Rooms reviewed in an earlier post.

Connecting with Music
Other than the light strum of a harp in the French Anteroom, the Escape from Thorne Mansion interactive missed an opportunity to couple era music with the room design. So, I’ve decided to pick up where the Art Institute of Chicago has left off and pair a few Thorne Room images with sounds from the time (click the widget to the right of the image to listen).

California Hallway, c. 1940

French Boudoir of the Louis XV Period, 1740-60

Japanese Traditional Interior, 1937

The Thorne Miniature Rooms create an amazing opportunity to connect history, literature, and music with art and design.  How else do the Thorne Miniature Rooms connect to your curriculum?

Click here to download Mac keyboard short cuts poster.

 

Share your tech tips for making technology in the classroom a little easier

to organize in the comments section below.

Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Below are clay project ideas collected in Pinterest. Just click on the image to take a closer look.

Grade levels: 4th grade through adult

Category: Art History, Teaching Resource

If you teach linear perspective, then Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion DVD hosted by Al Roker is a must-have. This video is an updated version of Masters of Illusion from the National Gallery of art containing many of the same images, descriptions and musical accompaniments.   Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion kept the best of the old and introduced new ideas to help explain perspective concepts. My favorite part of the video is the discussion of anamorphic art including The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.  Use as an introduction, play as students finish perspective drawings, or leave as a sub plan.

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Since publishing our 30 Best iPhone Apps for Art Teachers last year (August 2009), we have discovered many new apps that are worthy of being added to our best list. Covering a wide range of interests and uses, below are the Teaching Palette’s 10 Best iPhone, iPad and iPod Apps for Art Teachers 2010 – the latest and greatest apps for art teachers and their students. Consider this an amendment to last year’s list.

Apps for Student and Teacher Use

Animalia Based on the beautiful illustrations from the classic book by the same name, this app brings “eye spy” to a whole new level.  Explore various artwork by hunting for hidden items.

Accudraw Update your traditional grid drawing system with technology.  Photograph an object or use one from your library and overlay with a grid to create precision drawings.

Faces iMake Appropriate for younger students, this app uses a creative mix of collage materials inspired by author and artist Hanoch Pivin. Upgrade to the premium version for additional features. See our full review of Faces iMake here.

KidsOrigami Beautiful images illustrate simple origami folding techniques for kids.  Just click on a paper crane, frog, etc. and follow the step by step instructions. Great for the analytical thinkers in your classroom. Recommended for late elementary and up.

Sketchn’ Guess Lite Available only on the iPad this app capitalizes on the larger screen size for game play. Players divide into two teams and try to gain the most points by guessing their team’s themes the fastest.  Features include a timer, score sheet, “Sketchn’ Guess” cards and several colored pencil choices for sketching in an easy to navigate format that allows for self directed play. Recommended for late elementary students and up.

fotobabble Great for an art critique or personal reflection, this simple app allows you to record and attach audio to a photo. Saved content can be posted publicly or privately accessible on the fotobabble website.

Art & Music If you enjoy integrating music into your curriculum, this is the app for you.  This app matches up music and art from corresponding time periods, ranging from Russian to the Classical West. (not iPad compatible)

Apps for Art History

MoMA AB EX NY Experience 200 Abstract Expressionist paintings all housed by the MOMA. Beautiful images of art that can be enlarged and displayed with additional information. The iPad app includes a selection of videos featuring comments by the curators, artist painting techniques  and art terms in action. My favorite video is The Painting Techniques of Jackson Pollack: One: November 31, 1950. There is also an interactive map and Art Terms glossary.

SmartHistory The closest you can get to Italy from home, this app gives an amazing virtual art history tour through Rome using various multimedia including video and google map locations.

French Impressionism Showcasing artwork from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, this app is perfect for Impressionism lovers. View detailed video descriptions, gallery views, and biographies including Monet, Seurat, Ceznne, along with many others.

Honorable Mention

ArtPuzzle HD (iPad) / ArtPuzzle Lite ArtPuzzle HD is set in an art gallery that you virtually walk through and unscramble over 70 famous art masterpieces. The iPad app features classical music, four levels of difficulty, information about each painting and the ability to save the image to your photo gallery. ArtPuzzle Lite is compatible with iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and offers many of the same features but, also has a quiz feature.

Art Start Created by an art teacher from Seattle, this idea generator can spark creativity in your students. Simply pressing the start button produces ideas for media, prompt, and color.

Learn about many other great apps reviewed for education though IEAR.

Independent Activities for Early Finishers:

The following is a guest post written by

Good Things Come in Small Packages. It is such fun to come across a book that our elementary-aged students can read that have ideas for visual arts lessons built right into the story. The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone does just that. It is a fantasy tale, perfect for 2nd-6th graders, about the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In our story, Jack and Ruthie go on a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and see the Thorne Rooms for the first time.  Jack discovers a key while on a separate special tour with one of the museum guards. The key leads Jack and Ruthie to discovering much more about the sixty-eight rooms! These exquisite rooms, whose design represents the style of a different era and place, were commissioned by Narcissa Niblack Thorne.  The artists and master craftsmen created each using only the finest materials. They were built using 1 inch to 1 foot scale. Even the doorknobs turn, and the desk drawers open, truly representing design in miniature. Our characters discover that the key is really a magic key, which transforms the person holding it into a miniature version of him or herself. We live vicariously as they walk into these rooms and step back in time to pre-revolutionary France, or to late seventeenth century America. By connecting with artworks mentioned in the story including Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, we can demonstrate the link between history and art. In this case, Jack and Ruthie realize that they landed in France prior to its revolution, that had been partially inspired by the American’s fight for freedom from British rule.

Kupjack Georgian Dining Room

18th Century Violin Makers Shop

Not all of us can travel to the Art Institute of Chicago to visit this wonderful collection. However there are other museums around the country that also have a connection to Thorne’s incredible legacy. The Knoxville Museum of Art, in Knoxville, TN, holds a collection of Thorne Rooms. These represent some of the earliest of her works. The Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, AZ is a museum dedicated to miniatures. In its fantastic collection, one can find the Kupjack Georgian Dining Room, an example of work by one of Thorne’s primary artists, Eugene Kupjack. The Phoenix Art Museum also holds 20 examples of the Thorne Rooms.

Make curricular connections:

Drawing & Math
Connect this wonderful fantasy to the creativity of our students by asking them to design their own “Contemporary Interior” where they design a room, using 1 inch to 1 foot scale, representing their place and time. Either using one-point perspective in drawing, or photomontage from magazines, the design of their own space would be a fascinating view of our 21st Century world from a child’s point of view.

Sculptural Paper Folding & Math
Jack and Ruthie, our adventurous 6th grade characters, go to school together in a Chicago neighborhood. In the opening chapter, Jack shows a bento box that he brought for lunch to school. Ruthie had never seen anything like it, and your students may not have either! Integrate a wonderful paper folding lesson, that implements measurement and folding for creating the bento box, and using paper folding and sculpture for the food.  There is a wonderful example in the Thorne Rooms collection of Japanese architecture and design known as the Japanese Traditional Interior that would connect wonderfully with this lesson.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms is a wonderful addition to any book or art club looking to connect literature with art. The magical tale would be a great read-aloud in the art classroom, leading to specific art projects that make children think about their enviroments and design.

Special Thanks to the Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, AZ for permission to publish the photographs of works in their collection, both taken by Balfour Walker. The museum can be found on Twitter at @tucsonmuseum Thanks to Nancy Walker for sharing her Bento Box lesson as well. Photos of teacher samples are from the Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts Summit XI Elementary Sessions hosted by Samantha Melvin and Nancy Walkup.

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Product Title: Toobers & Zots

Grade Levels: Kindergarten & up

Product Review: Intended as creative building tools for open ended play, Toobers & Zots are made out of the same material as swimming pool “noodles.” The large tube pieces, called toobers, are of varying lengths from a couple of feet to over a yard.  Toobers have wire inside which allows them to maintain whatever shape they are twisted into. They can be curled, bent, folded, and zigzagged into three dimensional forms. The other pieces, called skinnies and zots, can be attached to the toobers and other skinnies and zots. They add a decorative element to the work. There are over a hundred dots, short tubes, star bursts, circles, crowns, and other shapes. Watch the video of my Kindergartners using this product below.

Can’t see YouTube video above? click here.

This medium allows my students to work in a scale that is larger than they normally get to experience. Because of the abundance of material in each kit, several students can easily work cooperatively on one sculpture. I would suggest that you allow 1-3 students per box. Although my students do not get to keep their work when they are done, I take a photo of each student with their work and print a copy of it for them.

The forms come in a small box in which they fit tightly. Once they are put to use, it is near impossible to get them back in their cardboard box. I put each set in a plastic box about the size of two shoe boxes. The long tube pieces I keep separately in a large plastic bin. Storage is an issue for these currently, as I have limited storage space in my classroom.

The person in my county who introduced us to Toobers & Zot said that they are durable. She had been using her sets for over eight years.

When I priced them online, they seemed to be expensive. Amazon is selling them for around $24 a set. I did see several other sites offering them and the price was comparable. There were sets on eBay, new and used, for considerably less. Our county ordered so many thousands of sets of these, they were able to work out a much better deal with the company.

Though these were purchased for a specific lesson in my kindergarten curriculum, my older students have begged me to let them try them out as well. The kindergarteners thoroughly enjoyed using them and were slow to put them away.

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Product Title: Say the Time (PC-only computer program, see Mac alternative below)

Grade Levels: Kindergarten-12th grade

Product Review: I am an elementary art teacher, and I know that schedules are hard to keep. In my classroom, we have fifty-five minute classes, and when you take away clean up time, that doesn’t leave us with nearly enough time to get our work done. I also realized when I was helping students, that sometimes the time got away from me. So I  searched online for some kind of timer. What I found was Say the Time. It is an amazing program that can set reminders to go off every day.

I have set a reminder for when it is clean-up time for each class, and I have it repeat every week day. Whenever the bell rings, the students know it it time to clean up. This gets everyone going very quickly, and always on time! The program costs about $30.00, but that is a one time fee. There are no subscriptions or any other costs. Just recently, I have added another timer that tells students when they need to be in line and ready to walk out the door. Just today, I had a fourth grade class that was cleaned up and in line in less than one minute! It has worked wonders and given me back my class time. Another added bonus: You can set it to “Say the time” whenever you want it to (I have it set for every 15 minutes) which helps the younger students with elapsed time!

Please note:  Say the Time works on PC only.  If you are a Mac user, we found a similar product called “Timer 7.0” (click “download page” for free version)

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