ART for 1170

Thanks to Phyl at There's a Dragon in my Art room.  http://plbrown.blogspot.com . She gave me the great idea of using Batik to explore shapes and color with my fifth grade students. The best secret is the recipe!  No messy, scary waxes...it's TOOTHPASTE and LOTION! Seriously who would have thought?  I have seven sections of fifth grade students (about 200 kiddos). I purchased 10 yards of muslin at Joanns (with coupon) and 5 bottles of the cheap dollar store aloe vera lotion along with at least 40 tubes of white toothpaste.  The dollar store employees think I take my dental hygiene to a crazy level. I used old ketchup containers to mix the recipe half and half. Shake well.   The students studied shapes, overlapping, composition and using rulers and cardboard came up with a nice geometric composition on paper.  Miro, Stuart Davis, Mondrian would be good exemplars to use.  The paper was taped to a piece of cardboard then a small piece of muslin wrappe...

I'm still coming up with lessons to do with the stacks of donated styrofoam.  I had fifth graders come up with a design using hearts. As you can see some asked to use my table mirrors so they could write "love" messages!  I really like the white printing ink on red paper. Oh, last year I ran out of printing ink and tried tempera and acrylic...huge mistake.

Over the years I have received some very cool donations. TONS of styrofoam, linoleum, and this paper. A dad who worked in printing donated five reams of this paper. It's matte on one side and sticky on the other, kinda like the sticky part of an envelope.  I have used it with 4th and 5th grades to see what team could build the highest tower that had to stay up for at least 30 seconds. It's always neat to see the team that starts out with one huge tube and THEN tries to support it. I think I should read the book the "Rabbit and the Hare" because it's the team that works steady with a strong base that wins every time.  All they needed was scissors and a damp sponge. Wednesday I asked the 5th graders to work in teams to build anything they wanted. I saw lots of towers, rockets and people. I only thought to take a couple of pictures but this dog was really cool.

I have seen several art teachers do this lesson and I knew I had to try it. I purchased metal molds from Bed,Bath and Beyond. Day one the students push a ball of clay into the mold and cut off the extra clay. Then they form a pinch pot for the top portion adding any details. I have them put their name on a piece of paper to separate the two pieces so I can later add their names to the bottom. One piece of advice, make sure you have at least a 1/4 inch thickness around the mold. It it's too thin it will crack.  Bisque fire then glaze, day two and three.

This was a new project for me I found on http://elementaryartfun.blogspot.com/   I think I joined the rest of the world in the latest Peacock craze.  The students started by drawing their birds with chalk on black paper and then started using blue and white paint to create the bodies.  I showed them several pictures of peacocks and their feathers but as you can see everyone seemed to have their own idea of how the feathers look and that's the part that I love. 

 I know you've seen some of the masks that fifth graders make mid year but I just picked these up from the art show and had a chance to really study how wonderful they really are.  Just had to share!

This is the lesson that I probably receive the most feedback from others in the building. And it's always "How did they do that?"  Based on Apple's ipod campaign several years ago using silhouettes.  I show the students several ipod examples and then they work on an idea or pose using a paintbrush in their hand. I then take a picture and print them cheaply using gray scale or fax copy.  I show them examples of graphite paper or good old fashioned carbon paper (I do share how that's what was used before copy machines were made...GASP)  The students then trace around their body picture onto color paper and use a fine detail brush to fill in their bodies.  I got this lesson from an old issue of Arts and Activities.

The drying phase, this is where I run into trouble. I have almost 100 fifth graders at each school. So finding space for them to dry is a challenge. I like for each mask to have a subtractive and additive component but as you can see some student will skip the additive portion.  I also show them how to ball up a small piece of newspaper to give the mask a curved appearance.  I was really pleased with how the masks turned out this year.

Inspired by the art of George Rodrigue, a wonderful artist from Louisianna.  I showed the 5th grade students a Powerpoint of his work and then set out a few dozen pictures of dogs.  The students made a few selections and then sketched them in their sketchbooks.  We used tempera paints and then finished with black Craypas.  These are a few examples from PKE.