Imperial China on Paper Plates!

While one of my 6th grade classes began a Greek unit in art class and in Social Studies, the other class did a short unit on Ancient China.  Now, this project was originally going to be a two-project unit, however due to my shortage of clay, this is going to be a one-project lesson instead, and now this class will move onto Greek Art as well, as they are currently learning about the Ancient Greeks in Social Studies.

I previously saw this lesson floating around on Pinterest, which linked back to My Adventures in Positive Space.  I've also seen a few where teachers have their students draw and cut out vase shapes.  I decided this would be a good way to review the radial symmetry the students learned about in our Mexican Folk Art unit.

The focus of this project was to be able to identify the characteristics of Chinese porcelain, describe and create an artwork with radial symmetry, and mix various tints and shades of blue.  These are a few of the finished project, and just about everyone seemed to grasp the concept of radial symmetry by this point.

When we get back from February break, this group will begin the Greek unit with the scratch art Greek pottery.  My other 6th grade group will continue their Greek unit by learning about Greek architecture and will then design and draw a Greek temple using value.

Monochromatic Ice Cream Cones: Finished

In the last two days of 5th grade art class, we've gotten geared up to do our Van Gogh paintings.  First, we had to finish putting together our monochromatic ice cream cones and talk about color in art.

After all the cones were put together, I put one of each color up on the board and we talked about each cone as a big group.  What happens to yellow and orange when you add black?  What kinds of hues of red do you get? Etc..etc...

Today, we read the short article in the September issue of Scholastic Arts about Picasso's Old Guitarist.  This is where we were able to get into talking about color and mood.  I asked each student to write the color they will use on the back of their canvas and fill out the ice cream rubric and color theory/Van Gogh review questions.  Next class we tackle painting the background/sky and ground in our artworks!

Here is my rubric for this project.  I must say that while I was worried at the beginning of the year about this group performing at an 80% or more on their final assessment (this is one of my SLO groups), I'm feeling much better about their performance now!  Creating an entire 5th grade curriculum around color theory is so easy to build upon and reinforce the previously learned information...