Chihuly Sculptures-2nd Grade

Whoo! There are finally done! We have spent 4 class periods on there...2 Ti color and 2 cutting and melting ad gluing each student's sculpture together! The pictures definitely don't do them justice...

Here's what we did:
1. We drew a large organic shape and colored it using right colors and patterns like Chihuly.
2. On a second piece of Shrinky Dibk, we drew 4-5 lines to make strips and we drew a smaller organic shape. Then we colored them in as well.
3. I called students up one at a time to melt their sculpture and glue them together. I ran the heat gun and glue gun, but when we glued them together, I had individual conversations with students about placement and composition in the sculptures.

Finally onto the next project! (I am posting this from my phone do pardon my pictures if the are out of order...I will link my site reference when I get home from school and have access to Pinterest!)

Chihuly and Kindergarten Primary Lines

This week my 2nd graders (well one class at least...the other had a field trip during art) finished their first Chihuly project.  We did the coffee filter project.  Before we went into the hallway, i had students get into a large circle in the room and place their pieces one at a time on the floor.  We talked about composition and placement.  At first, as expected, they just put them on the floor randomly.  After I rearranged them to try and make a more interesting shape, they started to catch on.  We did it one more time in the room and they decided they wanted to make an "A" for art out on the wall.  I wasn't so into the idea, wanting them to create something more organic, but when we got out into the hallway and they were giving each other directions on where to place the coffee filters, they came up with this diamond shape.  Still not quite what I had in mind, but much better than a Chihuly "A"!  We shall see how the 2nd class does later this week!

For the final project in the Chihuly unit, they will be creating their own Chihuly sculptures using shrinky dink plastic.  More on that to come as I will be making and trying out my own example to figure out the best process for melting them in class!  I bought a heat gun to use but I am going to have to figure out if it will be better to go to the old home ec. room where there are two ovens to bake the pieces during class.  It will be A LOT for me to take home and do if I end up bringing everything home!  Plus, it will be harder to keep track of the pieces once they are curled.

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My kindergarteners have finished their primary lines paintings and we are now onto secondary shapes.  Here are some of their finished products!  A couple of the "good cutters" really got into making some creative lines out of the silver paper!

More posts to come this weekend!  I have a few other finished projects / projects in progress that I want to share!

Primary Lines, Chihuly, Shading and Day of the Dead!

So today is the first day I am actually starting to feel overwhelmed by APPR!  It's very frustrating because someone will tell you something and then the next day, they tell you something different and wonder why you were doing it the way you told them to the day before!  I was told today that I need to have my SLO's completely written by Monday...which doesn't seem possible if it hasn't been BEDS day to get my actual student count per grade level!  And, the one thing I am very unclear about is how the HEDI scoring works.  Plus, I haven't graded any of my completed pre-assessments because my administrator wanted me to take a sub day to grade them all at once...how can I write my SLO's if I haven't graded those yet????

Well, now that I have vented and my rant is over, I will get on to what we did in art class today!

My kindergarteners painted primary lines.  First we practiced drawing different lines on a worksheet.  I reviewed how to paint with tempera paint and let the kids go!  I have to say, today's group was VERY good about not getting paint all over the place and they worked really well together to clean up.  Very refreshing, especially for the first day of painting in kindergarten art!  The only thing this group was not very good with, was being creative and using a variety of lines in their painting.  I'm sure I'm going to find that the other groups will be opposite!

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I originally intended to begin with cave art for my 6th graders, however their social studies teacher this year was beginning with Ancient Egypt.  Soooo, I photocopied my Egypt packets and planned to start today...however last class the kids complained SOOO much that they didn't want to start with Egypt (I can't blame them too much, they did an Ancient Egypt portrait painting at the end of last year before I planned this years curriculum), so we decided to do Mexican Folk Art instead, and then Egypt.  Today, we worked through the packets (not as much complaining about that once I explained to them that they can use them to study for their final assessment!) and started designing sugar skulls.  Next class, we will use plasterkraft (I think that's what it's called...the strips of plaster in a box???) to cover a head form to make a mask.  Then, we will take two classes to paint them.  Does anyone have any good suggestions on how to go about covering the mask? I've heard of covering it with petroleum jelly before using the plaster stuff, but I'm not sure I want to go that route.  Will wet paper towels work?

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My 2nd graders viewed a powerpoint on Chihuly and we discussed his use of color, shape, pattern, and the emotion students felt when looking at his work.  They really enjoyed it.  For our first chihuly project we are going to do the coffee filter chihuly project and create a collaborative wall sculpture with them in the hallway.  For the second chichuly project, I bought the shrinky dink plastic...I'm excited to get to that, it's my first time using it!

Next class we will glue these onto a small piece of tagboard so we can tape them to the wall easier. While we wait for them to dry, I found a variety of videos about Chihuly on YouTube.  The students were really interested in watching how he makes these forms so I have about 25 minutes worth of video pinned to show them.

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Last but not least, my 4th graders are working on shading and value.  Last class they received a brief introduction to shape vs. form.  Today they learned how to shade using varying pressure on their pencil, as well as stippling with markers, and hatching/cross-hatching.  Next class they will practice shading 3-D forms with a light source (like a cube and cylinder).  This group really likes the q-tip pointillism painting and they asked to do a lot of project with it last year, so they really enjoyed the stippling technique.  Stippling is one of my favorites as well!