The Koi Pond

 

At the end of every year my school hosts it's annual "Spring Walkthrough", where teachers line their classroom walls with the work their students have done throughout the year, turning the building into a giant museum. Since our elementary school has a little over 600 students you can imagine the chaos that ensues. This year, one of my favorite displays was my koi display. The first grade art teacher and I hung our work together and showed off her kids 2D koi and my fifth graders koi sculptures. Here are a few pics:

 

 The idea for the clay fish came from a video on youtube by fellow blogger "Adventures in Positive Space".  The title of the video is "Koi Fish Sculpture Tutorial"

 

 

 

5th Grade Stellar Planets

These planets look as great in person as they do in these photos!

There are a few versions of this project out there, so I don't get any points for originality, but regardless, it's a great project and more importantly, the kids really seemed to like creating them. 

The project took about 5-40 minute periods. On day 1 I showed everyone how to create the "waves" and blend them in an upward facing direction. On day 2 I set up a splatter paint station and demo'd how to start shading the planets. I flipped this lesson and used mostly video demo's which was incredibly useful because it took the kids 3 perios to complete the planets. So instead of having to demo the shading every period for my 5-5th grade groups, I just replayed the video and they saved on work and transition time. They had to make 5 or more planets. On the final day they cut and glued their planets, making sure all the shadows were on the same side. We discussed light sources and I explained that on a 2D surface, having a consistent light source would make their art look better even though they pointed out to me that in space there would most likely be multiple light sources ah, my 5th graders always thinkin!).

Year End Round-Up-Better late than never!

Here are a whole slew of lessons I didn't have time to post about during the school year.  This post has been sitting on my "to-do" list for a long time!!

 5th Grade Birch Trees

 For this lesson we tried our hands at homemade watercolors. The kids loved the idea of using materials they made from scratch to use in a painting, Unfortunately, the watercolors didn't come out half as vivid as the crayola standard sets so, I gave the kids the option of using them, and some did, but mostly the ended up using the palettes anyways.  At least they had fun making them! For the painting itself, we used masking tape to mask off the "tree's", painted the background first, and then after removing the tape, added thin Sharpie lines and watercolor strokes to give the trees its trademark texture.

5th Grade  Symbol Spoons

My fifth graders seriously blew my mind when making these spoons. The only requirement I gave them was to include at least 3 different symbols that represented themselves or their interests.  What they came up with was AMAZING! We used tempera paint with modge podge instead of glaze so I could give them as many options for color as possible. 

4th Grade Clay Looms and Weavings

 In retrospect I wish I had taken more photo's of these, because they really were beautiful but I was so darn frustrated with this project, by the time I got the case up, I wanted nothing more to do with it! 
If you ever have the kids make their own clay looms, be prepared to use A LOT of clay, and spend LOTS of time with the hot glue gun repairing cracks, chips, and breaks.  Oh and possible a drill and drill bit for all those pesky holes that shrunk too small in the firing process even though though you told the kids 1000 times to make the holes BIG.  OK, rant over!

3rd Grade Stacked Teacups

This was the last project of the school year.  I needed something fun, quick and gave the students enough freedom to stay engaged without giving them so much freedom that their summer jitters would create pandemonium during art!

Simple Notan in 5th grade

I used this project as a kind of "mini-lesson" to introduce positive/negative space to my fifth graders. Now that they've finished it, I'm going to introduce a patterns in nature project where they create  white tree silhouettes surrounded by different designs inspired by patterns found in nature.  Originally, I had hoped that the notan would take one period, but silly me, NOTHING, takes only1 period in art! So here's how the 2-day project broke down:

I began by showing them this PowerPoint.

Patterns in Nature PP

More presentations from Tarabelle

(You can also access it HeRe on authorshare)

In the PowerPoint I had links to two videos: one by the Virtual Artist, on positive and negative space and the other is a video on how to create notan.

5th Grade Giacometti Sculptures

This project was done by my fab leave replacement.  I'm always searching for ways to incorporate more sculpture into my curriculum.  I feel like it's very easy to get caught up teaching 2D work to the detriment of 3D work, so I was really glad she was starting off my fifth graders year with this project.

The sculptures are based on Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti: 

"All the art of the past rises up before me, the art of all ages and all civilizations, everything becomes simultaneous, as if space had replaced time. Memories of works of art blend with affective memories, with my work, with my whole life." 

 

 More information can be found: Giacometti at ArtStory

 The sculptures were done using cardboard bases, thin armature wire (I like it to be thin enough that the students can cut it with scissors and not pliers), paper towels, mache mix, and black, brown, and metallic paints. The project took about 6, 40-minute periods.  

FYI, I stumbled across the site mentioned above while researching a bit on Giacometti The sites mission is to explore art in "a fresh and clear way".  Hmm, it may make for a good resource!

The Art Story 

Another great site is the Giacometti Foundation