Sculpture with Grade 5? It's a piece of cake!

The school I was substitute teaching at was celebrating its 40th birthday while I was there. Naturally, I had to have the students create some yummy cake-themed art in celebration! I decided on a Wayne Thiebaud theme for two of the grades. Grade 5 made these awesome 3D papier mache and collage cakes frosted with (get ready) shaving cream mixed with Elmer's glue. Yeah, I know, kind of crazy--but it was AWESOME!!!

Let's get ready to PARTY! Cakes, cakes & more cakes!! YUM!

I got the idea for these cakes from Mrs. Hahn at Mini Matisse and the students had a blast creating these. This was a great project because it used up lots of little bits of paper, sequins, beads and more and allowed the students TONS of creativity. We received so many compliments on them and they truly looked good enough to eat! Definitely a keeper!

ENJOY!!

REPOST: Symmetrical Paper and Clay Butterflies

It's been a long summer here in New Hampshire--my kiddos have been on break since June 10th and don't start school again until September 8th--WOW! So, the long and lazy days of summer need some crafting with mom time. Here's a butterfly that Little Miss did today. This is a post from back in September of 2012, but it's a good one--very fun (and shhh....educational too!). ENJOY!

And here's the original post:

Do you know some students who are studying butterflies? This is a great project for children in Kindergarten and elementary school. You can work in so many great concepts with this project: parts of an insect, symmetry, pattern, and more.

I started by having my students cut out the wings and design them and then I walked them through the making of the butterfly body. We finished up by adding the details such as antennae and legs. I really enjoyed this project because it taught science and art concepts, but it also because it allowed the students some self expression; a win/win in my book!

Clay Butterfly With Paper Wings

Supplies Needed:

• One 6" x 9" piece of construction paper for the wings (light color)
• Pencil with eraser
• Scissors
• Assorted markers
• Model Magic by Crayola (about the size of a chicken egg), whatever color you want
• 3 pipe cleaners (chenille stems), whatever color you want

Directions:

1. Fold the construction paper in half the short way (hamburger or taco fold).

2. Arrange the construction paper so the fold is on the left. Draw a capital letter "B" on the paper extending it so the top and bottom of the "B" touch the top and bottom of the paper.

3. Cut out the "B" shape, but don't cut the middle line (in between the upper and bottom bumps). Write your name on the paper and open it up so your name is face down. These are your butterfly wings.

4. Decorate the wings with whatever designs you would like: big dots, little dots, lines, etc. I showed a couple of butterfly books to the children before they started drawing. I asked them to make their designs symmetrical, or the same on both wings.

5. I then gave each child a ball of Model Magic the size of a chicken egg. I had them pull off a piece and roll it into a 3/4-1" ball. This is the butterfly's head. Place this ball of dough at the top of your butterfly's wings and press down slightly.

6. Divide the remainder of the dough in half (two equal parts). Form he first into a ball. This is the thorax for your butterfly. Place this ball of dough below your butterfly's head on the wings and press down slightly.

7. Roll the remainder of the dough into a hot dog shape about 3" long or so. This is the abdomen of your butterfly. Place this ball of dough below your butterfly's thorax on the wings and press down slightly.

8. Use scissors to cut each pipe cleaner into three equal sections. Poke 2 pipe cleaner pieces into the butterfly's head as his antennae. Wrap another pipe cleaner piece into a coil and poke it into the head for the butterfly's proboscis.

9. Poke the remaining 6 pipe cleaner pieces into the butterfly's thorax (3 on one side, 3 on the other). These are the butterfly's legs.

You're done! Enjoy your colorful butterfly!

Grade 5 Tooled Metal Lines and Patterns

My fifth grade students loved this great little project. We talked about different types of lines (dotted, straight, curved, dashed, etc.) and pattern. I gave the students four little 3 1/2" square pieces of white paper and they could create little compositions that included line and pattern.

Once they were done, they selected one of their compositions to tool into metal. This is a very neat media to work with and this relief technique is called repoussé which is French for "to push back." You can get the tooling foil online at Dick Blick. It is quite reasonably priced--I was able to get enough 3 1/2" and 4" squares for multiple classes from one roll with some left over.  The foil is easy to cut and use (I use a box cutter but you can use scissors too). To make the marks, I have students use a dull pencil on the metal while it is on a piece of felt that has been folded in half to make a double-thickness. Sometimes students need to go over their lines twice to make a nice, deep mark, but otherwise students have a high rate of success with this media. 

Once the metal portion of the project was done, I gave each student an 8" x 10" piece of mat board and they could take a pencil and extend the patterns and lines beyond the metal square over the surface of the mat board. They then colored the lines and patterns on the mat board with oil pastels. Once done, we hot glued the metal squares to the mat board. 

I think they came out beautiful!

Students could place the tooled metal square wherever they liked
on the mat board (in the center, off to the side, etc.). They then used
color, line and pattern to fill up the space.

The students were VERY engaged during this project and loved the results. The photos don't do them justice--they are beautiful and colorful. ENJOY!

The partially completed bulletin board that shows the variety of the work.
BEAUTIFUL!

When they were done, I had them affix all four of their design squares (the preliminary sketches they did on paper) to a worksheet and fill out a self-assessment on the back.

P.S. For additional tooled metal projects, check out my Mexican Folk Art Ornaments and Mexican Folk Art Trinket Boxes. 

Planning Your Classroom Design? Look at this research...

Well, I've been busy this summer taking one of my last Graduate courses--Research Design, and it has been pretty neat. I've actually enjoyed reading about educational research and it's given me some things to think about as I move into my student teaching this Fall (YIPPEE!! SO thrilled!).

If you are blessed to have a teaching job and a classroom to plan, check out this study called, "Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad" written by Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman. This article was originally published in Psychological Science May 2014. 

Here's the Abstract:
A large body of evidence supports the importance of focused attention for encoding and task performance. Yet young children with immature regulation of focused attention are often placed in elementary-school classrooms containing many displays that are not relevant to ongoing instruction. We investigated whether such displays can affect children’s ability to maintain focused attention during instruction and to learn the lesson content. We placed kindergarten children in a laboratory classroom for six introductory science lessons, and we experimentally manipulated the visual environment in the classroom. Children were more distracted by the visual environment, spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed.
(from http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/20/0956797614533801.abstract)

If you don't want to purchase the full article, check out this online write-up from The Association of Psychological Science that summarizes the article.

This study really got me thinking about the visuals that are in the classroom and how they affect student learning. As a graphic designer and a visual person, I get distracted easily by clutter and "stuff" all over surfaces and walls. I also need to be able to know where my supplies are. I felt like this was also true with the students in the middle school art classroom I substituted in this past Spring. I tried hard to organize the classroom to have zones and label drawers and cabinets neatly so that the students (and I) could find things and work efficiently. I also tried to keep visuals to a minimum and have them relate to the project at hand. I think in my future classroom, I would make some adjustments to that even more--I'm always learning!

I hope you enjoy this study as you plan your classroom for the fall!

P.S. If you do want some kick-butt posters for your classroom, check out my free posters here. ;-)