I have returned to this assignment after a few years. I always enjoy learning new things about my students. They are such a diverse group of TCKs; representing a mosaic of cultural backgrounds, languages and experiences. I had them write artist statements in the form of a letter to explain the symbolism within the finished pieces.
This one, for me, seems to best illustrate the Third Culture Kid experience; in both the division and blending together of two identities.
Showing off some pages from our sketchbooks this quarter!
I am so excited about this year’s final elementary pieces! I will be handing over the reins of elementary art to a new teacher next year, so these last moments with the students are precious.
We began this project looking at calendar images; describing the different parts of a landscape, including colours and textures. I had a few volunteers come up to the board to draw lines to show these different textures. Then we got busy painting (and stamping) paper to represent water, rocks, grass, flower fields…
A few lessons were spent painting paper before we had enough, I think we all enjoyed the process. Then we talked about assembling our landscapes in layers on a background paper. We talked about the different colours the sky could be (I ran out of the usual blue paper!) and what we could put in the foreground, middle ground and background. The students cut paper for each of these parts and glued down the pieces. I encouraged them to include additional shapes with paper- trees, rocks, clouds, sun…
A following lesson, we learned how to fold an origami house using two sizes of paper. To create a sense of perspective, we made larger houses to put in the foreground, and smaller ones for further back. We used pieces of foam behind to pop out these houses even more!
Once we had all of our main shapes, we added details. Out came the puffy paint (never thought I would go near this stuff, it has taken 5 years!) We practiced first on scrap paper, making dots, dashes, wavy and zigzag lines before moving onto embellish our landscapes.
The final step to make these arpilleras more textile-like: I had the students punch holes along two of the sides (some chose to go all the way around) and I demonstrated how to ‘sew’/wrap the edges in yarn to finish it off.
They are oh so lovely and colourful, and we learned many lessons along the way
Credit for this idea goes to the amazing Cassie Stephens
Here is another across elementary project that we just finished up on the theme of heroes… and I was lucky to secure enough bulletin board space to display them all! In class, we discussed what makes someone a hero and thought of examples of heroes we knew: people in our everyday lives, historical figures, athletes… Each student chose a personal hero and did some thinking on how to portray them. We learned how to draw portraits, having previously learned about drawing the figure in a pose.
This unit was my first experiment in TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behaviour) and allowing more student-driven choice, which I have not been brave enough for with younger ones. It went pretty well, I had stations set up around the room with different materials. We were already familiar with these materials from earlier this year, so they required only a few reminders before they jumping into choice.
One focus of the unit was developing carefulness, one of the intellectual virtues. Students had the opportunity to practice with different materials first, before making decisions for the final piece. The final results were varied- some students chose to stick with coloured pencils and markers, others branched out into painting, pastel and collage. It was rewarding to sit back and watch the artistic process, as they figured out how to solve problems and combine different media together to create a finished piece.
The sweetest moments were reading the artist statements students wrote to accompany their finished artworks.
Our school celebrated international cultures week mid-April. Within the student body, we have representatives from 24 countries! It was a busy and exciting week with a whole-school assembly, musical performances, cultural games and a potluck lunch. Amidst the flurry of special activities throughout the week and the themes of celebration and diversity; we looked at masks.
We talked about the reasons why people wear masks and where they get their inspiration from. We looked at masks from Papua New Guinea, discussing the colours, shapes, patterns and textures we observed. We also discussed the differences of symmetry and asymmetry in the designs.
Everyone started with a cardboard base. We talked about building a relief using different textures, shapes and layers.
Once the masks were complete, we painted them. The final step was to add pattern and detail with pastels.
We travelled to a country further east around Christmas time. It is not a country that celebrates Christmas, but this became a good topic of conversation in my classroom. In China, they DO celebrate New Year, which is more similar to what is celebrated here in Turkey.
We looked at the Chinese lanterns used in decoration at New Year. First we practiced drawing different types of lanterns in a step by step guided drawing, and later worked independently to create our own composition of lanterns. We discussed drawing to fill the whole space on the page, with bigger lanterns in the front and smaller ones behind.
I introduced my students to value and analogous colours so we could create lanterns that popped off the page. The goal was to get them to use a light, medium and dark version of a colour within one lantern.
After tracing over all of our pencil lines and colouring in each of our shapes, the students painted the background with blue tempera paint. The pastel resists the paint, so we needed to make sure all the white space was coloured in!
The final step was to create dots/strings of light with yellow and white in the background. Students printed these with the end of a paintbrush.
We studied the art of sumi-e brush painting. First we practiced holding the bamboo brush and making different types of strokes. The next class, we put our practice to the test and painted compositions of bamboo. The students chose one word/fruit of the Spirit-love, joy, peace, hope, faith- to write vertically down one side of the paper. Our final class, I had the students design a signature chop (from foam) to sign their finished piece, and then mount the finished works on construction paper.
Fifth graders looked at the art of porcelain Ming vases. We discussed the variety of different shapes and silhouettes. I demonstrated how to create a symmetrical vase drawing with two sides that mirrored each other. These pencil outlines were filled in with different shades of blue pastels. The next class, we painted over the pastel layer with white tempera, and made drawings of design ideas for our vases. During the final class, designs were scratched into the paint to reveal the blue layer underneath. Vases were cut out and mounted together in a composition on black paper.
After our unit in the caves, we flew off to a new country in West Africa; Ghana.
We started with making two patterned papers.
1. Printed gold patterns on black paper- we made printing blocks by wrapping twine around sponges
2. Painted geometric patterns using colour, line and shape
Once these papers were finished, we wove the two patterns together to create a new and intricate pattern. The black paper became our warp and the coloured was the weft strips. Weaving always goes over great- I did it with both groups last year, so this was review for most. We talked about how Kente cloth is used to make new clothes for special occasions and thought about what occasion we would make our designs for; a few students wrote artist statements about the meaning behind their finished pieces.
We looked at examples of symbols and their meanings; and watched an artist through the process of stamping a design on cloth.
I gave the students sheets of ideas of existing symbols and encouraged to make a design of their own. They glued foam shapes onto a cardboard base.
The printing of these designs was exciting! Even after printmaking with classes this long, I still strive to make the process run more smoothly. I set up a long table in the middle of the room for inking, and each student at the remaining four tables had a number. When it was their turn, students inked their stamps in the middle and then returned to their tables to print. I encouraged them to rotate the stamps to create variation in their design and also incorporate a second symbol.
Today the second graders took on the task of naming their created colour mixtures from last class. We thought about what things in the world reminded us of each colour, looking at crayon and paint colour names for inspiration (this was especially helpful for the ELLs in the class, as well as boosting everyone’s vocabulary!) They all loved this exercise!
Our exploration of colour is spreading over two weeks. As a class, we reviewed primary and secondary colours, complementary colours, tints and shades. First and second graders did colour mixing experiments using primaries, black and white.
Fifth graders began an observational drawing of a form off of their sculpture. We used pastels to add the local colour and its complementary, and mixed to create highlights and shadows.
We are gearing up for a very exciting year in elementary art. To start off, we are working through an elements of art bootcamp to brush up on our basic skills: painting, cutting, gluing, assembling, etc. We are reviewing some of what we learned last year and making sure we are ready for our upcoming marathon.
Last week, we covered line and texture.
I have two lessons a week with the younger ones, so we spent one day on each element (for the older ones, we have to fit in two elements per lesson and it is a bit more hectic).
As they came into the art room, I donned a lab coat. Facing a slew of questions from the start, I announced that we were investigating and experimenting with texture and therefore had to wear appropriate attire (I had to get them excited about wearing artist smocks somehow!) I had a table of objects at the front covered with a cloth. A few brave volunteers came up to feel underneath the cloth, describing to the class what they felt. We briefly discussed different words we could use for texture: soft, rough, scratchy, bumpy, fluffy… this activity went much better with the second graders who had more English.
We looked at examples of artwork that showed texture and described the types of mark making we saw- textures created using line…. huh! Then it was off to the table to conduct experiments of our own.
Gateway Art 