We made Mandalas! Slideshow, Instructions, & Video.

We made Mandalas in Fifth grade to reiterate some radial design/balance info and complex patterns and repetition.  I included a little of the art history/cultural information too.

This project also knocked out our diocesan assessment, AND was supposed to be a good warm up for our collaborative church auction project. An awesome gel glue batik quilt! But, the best laid plans... 

I started out with this slideshow discussing what we were going to be doing.   I took photos from the internet, and turned it into a slideshow teaching what I wanted to teach.  I DID cite my sources at the end though!

I knew the concept itself wasn't going to be confusing for them, but actually making the mandala would be a little more difficult. I wrote out instructions - and even as I was writing them, I kept getting confused. If I was getting confused, I knew my fifth graders would have no hope. So, I made this video. The idea is always to show it to them first, and then have it stop and go as we work on it together.

 

The video definitely helped, but what doesn't help is not having light boxes when you are trying to trace.  All and all we got through it!  Here is the entire Artsonia Gallery.

Once this project was in the books, I set forth to complete the mandala gel glue batiks I was hoping would come together into a neato quilt for our Class Auction Project for our church gala.  Well.  I only see these friends once a week for 40 minutes... on a Monday... and we ended up having two Monday snow days and I was even sick one of the Mondays too.  The quilt never made it to fruition, but the small batiks did!

We transferred our original mandala to the fabric with glue during one class (I had xerox copied them) and painted with acrylic the next 2 classes.  I then took them home and soaked them in hot water, and threw them in my washer's rinse cycle!  I was so done with mandala's, I didn't want to spend another week on radial design!! 

That would have been a pretty funky quilt!  Right? Anyway, my washer seems to still be working fine. While much of this was going on, we also had a circular weaving on a CD project that they mostly worked on independently.  

I swear, if this class does not know what radial design is after this trimester... I am going to lose it!

Notan Leaves in Complementary Colors with slideshow, video, directions, and rubric!

Notan Design! It's a classic fourth grade art project. Isn't it? I have never once in my many years of teaching ever taught Notan design, but I saw this pin and thought, ooooh this looks cool.

My fourth graders had just finished up this seriously long color spectrum painting project, so we did not paint our papers, but perhaps in the future, this will be a nice twist. We discussed positive and negative space, which was also discussed in our color spectrum project, and learned about Notan Design from this slideshow. Okay, I always fess up that I am a picture stealer from the web. I'm not selling anything, I'm just resharing what is already out there...however this time, I'm resharing another slideshow that I worked into my slideshow to make it work for me. It was from SlideShare. I edited to my needs, and do give credit at the end. By the way, my fourth grader's heads' just about EXPLODED when they saw the face in the vase pictures. They were mesmerized. This was about 10 minutes of our whole discussion.
I passed out instructions, and every child was super confused. I knew this was going to be a tough one for some friends to grasp, so I made another video.

The kids were super impressed that I drew my leaf in one shot on the tracer without sketching, mistakes, and erasing.  Pro-tip- I had it drawn in white colored pencil on the paper first.

Students made their tracers first.  The project isn't about the tracers though, it is about the positive and negative space and complementary colors.  I had about 6 students struggling to get any semblance of a leaf on their card and offered "pre-made" tracers to the entire class at the very end of the hour. That small handful took me up on the offer.  My only intention here was to not have them already turned off from the project after the first step.

We folded and traced onto the colored paper.  The trickiest part is the cutting, like I showed in the video, it's easy to forget what you are doing and just start cutting.  But don't. Make sure students cut on the fold first!  Then cut our their shapes.  After that it is pretty easy peasy.

A few kids had a hard time figuring out the positive and negative parts, but overall it was smooth sailing.

The last day we went over our rubrics all together.  

Here are a few completed pieces:

Check out our entire gallery on Artsonia.

Painting like a real artist in 5th Grade.

I started teaching wine + paint events in June of 2014.  When I was prepping for my first 30 person adult party, I kept thinking I had to keep it simple, like how I teach 5th grade.  Well, my 5th graders haven't ever actually painted on canvas, so I thought it was time that they did.

Assembling easels.... kind of a pain.

I purchased a bunch of inexpensive easels from Blick.  The toughest part was getting them assembled.  Regardless, we finally got them put together!  We started by toning our canvas.  

The work the fifth graders were doing was actually pretty simple, and way less involved than a usual project.  I think that since they had the canvas, easel, palettes, and everything - they felt more like real artists.  They were super excited about this!

We sketched our Georgia O'Keeffe inspired flowers on our canvas, and next week we will start adding analogous colors to paint our petals.  They looked so cute all lined up on my floor, I had to take a picture!

Dia de los Muertos: Fifth Grade Tin Ornaments

This project goes waaaaaaay back to the days of my undergrad back at EIU.  I remember attending a workshop at the Tarble Arts Center where we made some tin ornaments inspired by Mexican Folk Artists.   It was kind of involved.  I remember using tin snips, sharp edges, and the colors we used were stinky and intense.  I totally modified over the years for fifth grade.

This lesson was an integration of our Hispanic Heritage Month and Day of the Dead Studies.  In the past I would also integrate with the students' studies of anatomy, but I do not even know what grade they teach that in anymore.

Yes, corner sun.  That is how you get  used as an example on this blog.

Students drew their festive skeleton on paper first.  We taped our paper to thin aluminum and traced our pencil lines.  We had newspaper place mats underneath to give the metal some give.  Then, we used a plastic stylus and traced one. more. time. directly onto the metal. We added a decorative border and colored with sharpies.  Finally, we added a fun mat of construction paper and GLITTER!

Robot Parade! Fifth Grade's collaborative robot sculptures and their stages of grief working in teams.

I picked up the idea of giving each student the same materials and seeing what they could do with it from another art teacher.  It was one of those ideas that stuck with me and I really wanted to try it.

Fifth grade has had the opportunity to work with many supplies this year, so I decided to focus this lesson on their 4Cs.  Collaborative learning, creativity, critical thinking, and communication were their goals for this project.

When I introduced this lesson I showed these two short YouTube videos



Both videos show artists using trash to make truly beautiful and unique art.  I stressed how the artists wouldn't necessarily leave the objects "as is" but had to manipulate them to use as their medium.

I then got them psyched for their theme with this terribly awesome homemade video of They Might Be Giants Robot Parade.




Next, I divided the class into teams.  I made the teams prior to the kids coming to class.  I thought about which students were leaders, followers, and strugglers, and made them even.

This is when the stages of grief started.

Students did not like their groups.  "I'm going to work alone!"  "Can I work alone!"  "I'm not working with them."  Denial.

Students sat with their new team and were charged with coming up with a robot themed team name.

I put the supplies at each table and told the teams to "play" with the supplies first.  I had prepared identical grocery bags filled with random supplies.  The hard part was making sure each bag was identical, but I was able to do it.  I wanted them to see all the possible things they could do before they made decisions.  Anger.  The class did not like this.  Everyone in the group had different ideas and arguments were starting over silly things.

"Can I switch groups?"  "Can only two of us work together?"  The collaboration portion of this project was taking a little harder to set in.  I would encourage students to communicate their ideas first, instead of just grabbing and doing.  Bargaining for different team mates, begging for different supplies... each team was feeling grief and it had only been 15 minutes.

I was loving everything I was seeing come together.  I saw great ideas!  I heard encouraging words!  It's getting there!  It's getting there! However, I also saw some kids turning away from their team or sitting sullen with their head down.  Depression.  "They don't want me to help!"  and "They're not letting me help!"  were the themes of the depressed students.  I was able to get the teams to communicate more effectively in each case.  It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be!  I would ask teammates what they wanted to contribute, and overwhelmingly, the other fifth graders would comply.  We also discussed how it made the teams feel when someone just started doing something without first presenting it to the team.

Acceptance!  Nope, not everyone loved the assignment.  But, everyone did it.  There was not one fifth grader not engaged in the process.  I even had a sea of thumbs up when I asked how they liked their day.  One student, who literally went through all the emotions in our one hour together, left class proudly exclaiming, "This was the best project EVER!  This was the best art day ever!!"

talkin' on my iPhone

dapper.

So, every team used the easel box for the body and the Kleenex box for the head.  And, every team used the puff ball for their nose.  I really did try to get them to "think differently" about these choices!  Next time I will make the sack of stuff less "obvious."

On the last day, I reviewed the 4Cs with my classes and students filled out an assessment page and reflected on their project. I loved reading their insights and all the positive responses.

Fifth grade van Gogh display: Sunflower Collaboration

I love to teach fifth graders how to mix analogous colors with colored pencils.  Every kid can do an amazing job and they are always proud of the results.

We had been learning all about Vincent van Gogh's life and art.  Instead of my usual lesson on Georgia O'Keeffe and her stunning flowers, I decided we would use van Gogh as our inspiration.

We cut out our flowers and assembled them into a vase in our main hall.

Vincent van Gogh, Dr. Who, and crying fifth graders.

I designed an entire art unit around an episode of Dr. Who.

When I saw Season 5, Episode 10 of Dr. Who, Vincent and the Doctor, I immediately knew I had to show this to my class.  It would be a perfect way to initiate emotional responses.  It could work as a great presentation of master work, and it could inspire kids to create!  All those visual arts standards would be integrated!

I took my class through a flashcard slideshow that I found on YouTube to reintroduce them to van Gogh's art.  Next, we watched Getting to Know the World's Great Artists:  Vincent van Gogh.  I prepared them that it was a little depressing for a cartoon.  (As an aside, my copy is VHS!  We had no way to watch it.... so I checked it out from my local library.) We've learned and discussed van Gogh other years, and for other projects, but I wanted to have students gain a greater depth of knowledge.  It's so Common Core. Which is not as cool as hard core.

We discussed the movie and I tried to answer questions about his life, his ear (was it Gauguin!), and his death as best I could to a group of fifth graders.  My class was very concerned about his suicide and depression.  I explained to them that he was ill, and constantly frustrated for not gaining recognition as an artist, and he lived in a much different time.

But what if 1886 Vincent van Gogh could travel in time to 2010 and see his artwork in a museum?

Intro to Dr. Who.  The Doctor is an alien who travels through space and time. I wish it didn't sound so nerdy, because I love it so much.  In Vincent and the Doctor, he travels back in time to deal with some kind of goofy invisible monster that's been messing with Vincent van Gogh.  I have to thoroughly explain to the class that this is complete fiction.  I show a brief five minutes of the 46 minute episode.  It starts at 38minutes and 30 seconds.  The Doctor, Vincent van Gogh, and Amy Pond land outside the Musee d'Orsa.  Vincent is overwhelmed by the collection of beautiful art.  Then, he enters a room packed to the brim exhibiting his work.  The Doctor asks the museum docent to briefly explain Vincent's art and contributions to art history.  Vincent stands within earshot as the docent proclaims the immeasurable impact van Gogh had in the art world, and society.  Vincent is overwhelmed, amazed, and inspired.  He practically breaks down in disbelief.

It's an emotional scene.  I thought it was pretty moving, and my fifth graders did too.  Several were on the verge of tears, and several wanted to watch the entire episode.  As a class we discussed the impact of something like that really happening.  Everyone had theories to share.  I could tell they were making a connection to van Gogh as a man, not just an old artist.

I presented Starry Night and  Sunflowers via Google Art Project.  The class loved seeing the close-ups of Starry Night.  The cracks, the canvas, and the blending of colors were all fascinating.  I ven took them on a tour of the van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands.  I love this part of Google Art Project, but it's a little anti-climatic after awhile.

Fifth grade did a few written assessments and reflections about what they learned.  We also used these studies for a few different creating or art production pieces too.

I discovered along the way that I wasn't the only nerdy teacher using Dr. Who in my lesson planning.
I found these on TeachersPayTeachers:

Elementary Art Lesson 4th: Van Gogh Impressionism Oil Pastel Sunflowers Dr Who

Elementary Art Lessons: Van Gogh Impressionism K-5 Bundle & Marzano and Dr Who

Fifth Grade Differentiated and Independent Centers Project: Drawing!

I set up centers in my classroom at the start of the 2012-2013 school year.  This year I began implementing differentiated independent projects to fifth grade so they get to learn a little more about what each media can do.  We recently finished independent projects in textiles and sculpture.

The drawing center assignments were two-fold.  Students were to learn a little bit about different genres of art and also different techniques on how to learn how to draw.

I began with a worksheet that reviewed different genres of paintings.
As a class we reviewed different drawing techniques.  We looked at examples of blind and modified contour (which was a skill we actually learned last year) and watched a silly video about it.  Next, we watched a slideshow showing the steps to drawing a still life.  Another technique is drawing with a grid.  Students warmed up with a mixed up grid drawing, and learned how this could be used to copy their own pictures and enlarge them.

Then came the decision time.  Their choices were:

Still life drawing.  Still life artists would set up their own still life from objects in the classroom and draw from life.

Portrait.  These artists had a choice to draw from a photo, or use a mirror.  In the end, the students who chose portrait mostly relied on their imaginations.  I provided fine art exemplars and even passed out a map of the human face, but students did it their own way.

Landscape, cityscape, seascape.  This was tough.  I wanted it to be realistic.  I was so terrified of having lollipop tree landscapes and corner suns... I gave this group several fine art exemplars to look at.  Mostly Jamie Wyeth.  They surprised me!

Magazine/drawing realistic.  This was my grid-drawing group.  Most jumped right in and did awesome work.  Some were confused, and still some preferred to attempt contour line or sketch.  And most do not understand how to use a ruler.  Regardless, they look great.

Once our initial sketches were finished, and line drawings done on their final, I brought the class back together to learn shading.  I struggle with teaching light & shadow every year.  Most kids don't actually see the light or the shade unless it is a really bright or stark contrast.  So, we faked it.  We practiced value scales and added imagined shades to spheres, cones, & cylinders.  Students were charged with imagining a light source in their drawing.  We started with what would be the absolute darkest, and worked our way through there.

Many students found success with this lesson, but I noticed they found it tedious.  After the second hour, most students just wanted to be done.  I was pretty lenient, since we did have other projects going on at the same time.

Fifth Grade Hoarders.

My fifth graders have "project boxes" in the art room.  It's purpose is to hold their sketchbook and any "in progress" projects.
I rifled through project boxes to retrieve work that needed to be graded for third quarter.  I was totally blown away by the supplies students had been hoarding in their project boxes.  It seemed like my pencil supply kept needing replenishing-- but I am so particular about my erasers!!! How could I not notice all the missing erasers?  And why were they keeping project visuals? What a mess.