Friday, January 27, 2012

2nd Grade Aboriginal Art


I love teaching about Aboriginal art, the culture, history and mythology of the Aboriginal people is so fascinating and it always seems to inspire the students. In this lesson I taught a few key concepts over the course of about 5 40-minute periods, these include:
- Use of warm colors
- Many animals were depicted as a sort of x-ray, with colors and shapes filling the bodies
- Aborigines live in the outback, a rural area sepearted by a lot of land from the larger cities
- A good way to remember that the Aborigines were the first people to inhabit Australia is the word original, which can be found when you take away the a and b.
- Use of dots to help add texture to their work
- Use of symbols to tell a visual story
- The 'dreaming' is an Aboriginal creation story, and each tribe has their own dreamings
- Due to Australia's geographical location Aboriginal art is very unique has many of its own separate qualities and characteristics.  


The students work had to meet the following criteria for completion: Each piece had to have an x-ray style animal filled with shapes and colored in.  2 or more symbols which could have been ones we discussed and viewed in class or ones they had thought up on their own.  A path (to help depict a journey). Dots painted in a controlled, organized manner and everything except the dots had to be outlined in Sharpie to help keep the edges clean. We used crayola construction paper crayons which I liked a lot, the colors only come out a little bit brighter, but overall the effect is worth it. 












2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love teaching this unit to my students. Your kids did a great job! I really hope to take a trip to Australia someday. It's on my bucket list! If I get to teach the unit this Spring, I'll be sure and post examples so you can see what projects I teach for grades 1-5.

ArtMuse said...

Awesome! Australia is a beautiful place, my in-laws went there and brought back over 1000 pictures!