Peruvian Arpilleras

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

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Credit for this idea goes to the amazing Cassie Stephens

 

Our Heroes

 

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

Oceania Masks

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We Love Dads

In a scramble for last-week activities, I remembered that this Sunday is Father’s Day! So today was declared card making day, my last class with first grade. We used oil pastels for the block lettering and patterns, and brushed tempera paint overtop to create our masterpieces- so colourful and bright!

 

BUGS!

Are these not the cutest? Today, as a final touch, we added insects to our fruit collages!

Eric Carle Week-of-Crazy

There is a little over a week of normal classes left, and my days are only getting busier with end of year responsibilities:
finishing projects, marking, handing back artwork, deciding on recipients for fine arts awards… all this while trying to keep my desk clean and the constant pile of papers under control. This is the week I had allocated as Eric Carle week. I have looked forward to it all term. The students had fun creating textures for painted paper, which were later used for beautiful collage pieces. This was a great project for exploring complementary colours!

In kindergarten, we also explored collage, making our own hungry caterpillars with scraps of painted paper. This little one amazed me, he has come so far since the beginning of the year!

Look closely at the intricately drawn detail on the body of the caterpillar- I was told this is all the food he has eaten which is in his tummy!

Trials… and Celebrations

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the art room, each day has its trials and celebrations. Hanging up these bright, cheery eggs made the day a bit better. Also, knowing that Easter break starts tomorrow and I will be flying away to Greece for some adventuring!

Portraits

This week I finished a favourite project of mine with the kindergarten and first grade: self portraits! They always make me smile. We did our drawing first in black pastel, then painted the shirt, background, face and hair. Once the paint dried, we added detail to the face and shirt using coloured pastels. We also filled in our backgrounds with pattern, using line, shape and colour, which was a great review of previous learning!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.