The Color Wheel

I do this project every year with 5th grade. I have tons of old scrap paper donated from an invitation supply company. While the paper may be funky colors, it is good quality paper. We fold the paper so that there are 12 squares, all the same size. I give students the primary colors, and we mix the secondary colors. We use the primaries and secondaries to mix intermediate colors. That typically takes one whole class time of about 55 minutes. When they come back, we make a design template. Students have to trace the design on all 12 squares, then cut each one out. Students have to arrange the designs in the order of the color wheel, and label everything. This step usually takes about 55 minutes as well, making for 2 55 minute periods.

Klimt Printmaking 2nd grade

Well, I have lost my camera, so no posts for a while, but I have some new things to share with a borrowed camera. These are second grade, I gave them 3 5x7 inch pieces of watercolor paper, and let them color the paper with Crayola markers. We chose colors that touched on the color wheel, to avoid making brown. Students used water and a paint brush to mix the colors, then we practice drawing the Tree of Life, from Klimt. Students used the foam blocks (4x6in) from DickBlick. We used pencils to draw the design, then we printed our trees on our watercolor paper. Straight out of Arts and Activities magazine, but very nice.

5th Grade Profile Views

Fifth grade completed these wonderful profile pictures. While I do not know that I would do these again, as they took weeks to complete, the results are very nice. I began by tracing each student's profile on a sheet of white paper. I helped students draw grids inside the profile. I gave them a sheet with nine squares and asked for nine designs. I chose four and students filled in the grid with the designs. Students then chose five colors and filled the designs with colors.

Ceramic Leaves

This is one of those projects you see everywhere....so not sure exactly who to give credit to, but I have been wanting to try them for so very long. I did these with 5th grade, though they are easy enough that just about any grade level could do them. We talked about about organic/geometric shapes and about the different ways to work with clay. Fifth graders rolled out a slab, and selected a leaf from a nature walk outside. (I think all of the leaves came from the same few trees). We pressed the leaves into the clay and traced them. After the leaves were bisque fired, students glazed them with the glaze of their choice. They are the Mayco Crystallite glazes and the colors are fantastic!

Ice Cream Treats

Third Grade has studied Wayne Thiebaud and all of his glorious sugar. We viewed slides of his paintings and drew ice cream. I think some of them would have eaten the paper, that is how excited they were to draw ice cream!

Metal Tooling

I love these! I got this out of Dynamic Art Projects for Children-Fantastic book, if you are in the market for new books. Fifth and sixth grade students had a social studies unit on Mexico, so we talked about the arts of Mexico. Students chose and animal and made several sketches of the animal. I chose one, and they enlarged in on 12x18 paper. They cut the animal out of the paper then they cut up styrofoam plates and glued the pieces down to form patterns and designs on the animal. I had old cardboard boxed stockpiled and I glued the paper animal with styrofoam pieces to the cardboard. This took forever, but I cut all of the animals out of the cardboard, I just was not comfortable with kids using razer blades. I am not a fan of blood. We covered the animals in aluminum foil and then the kids colored them with Sharpie markers. They were beautiful. I had parents tell me that they were making these at home as well.

Op Art Spheres

I have seen this lesson everywhere on blogs, so thank you to all of you! I like this lesson as it is a great sub lesson. We discuss optical illusions and look at several examples, the kids love them! Then we draw a circle in the middle of the paper. I show students how to make the lines curve with the circle. I give students a ruler and they draw the grid in the background. We talk about contrasting colors, and the kids are off! When the students are finished coloring, we take vine charcoal and add a shadow to the sphere. I usually mount these on construction paper to make them look finished.