African Masks

Kindergarten

These masks were made with cardboard I pre-cut. I gave the children sponges for making geometric stamps and q-tips to make small dot designs. We talked about repetiton and symmetry (in simple terms.) We also did some oil pastel and paint scratch art at the tops. I created holes and tied rafia.

Louise Nevelson Inspired Mini Assemblages - 2nd Grade

These were a lot of fun for my 2nd grade group. First I found some recycled cardboard to use as our base. I told the kids a couple weeks ahead, to look around their house for bits of stuff they didn't need: hardware, old legos, bottle caps, buttons, anything about the size of a half dollar or smaller. I also had a collection of odds and ends to choose from. We looked at Nevelson's work and I explained how she used cast offpieces of wood to create her amazing large assemblages. I encouraged them to mimic her grid style of composition with chopsticks they could break or straws they could cut to create columns and rows. Some of them got really creative, building out in a very 3 dimensional way. Lastly I spray painted them black to create the look of a Nevelson piece.

David Hockney Style
Photo Collages

I'm so glad I decided to introduce the work of David Hockney to my group of 5th graders. I explained how Hockney was inspired by the Cubist movement in doing his photo collages. Each student could pick their own subject matter and divide it up in sections. They were encouraged to play with the zoom on the lens to get different distances of their subject. I think they came out great! I am particularly fond of the black cat, "Phoebe."

Eric Carle Inspired
Fish Collages
Kindergarten

Each session I like to do a collage inspired by Eric Carle. Day 1 we work in stations, making unique textures and patterns on paper. We use combs, chopsticks, q-tips, cotton balls, splatter painting and more. Each child will have 4 different colored and patterened papers. For the fish collage we used sponges double dipped in blue and green to create our ocean. Day 2 we cut out our fish and add some tissue paper sea weed.

Cubist Portraits 2nd Graders

Again, one of my favorite lessons inspired by the cubist portrait project at Ms. Julie's Place. The hardest part of the project is drawing the profile down the middle of the face. I encouraged the kids to think of their face in terms of lumps and bumps (a large triangular pointed lump for the nose, 2 small bumps for the mouth) a la "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." Next, we broke the face up using geometric shapes, went over lines with a permanent marker and finally watercolor. I challenged them to try not to have a shape of one color touch a shape of the same color - a little tricky. This group of boys (no girls in this class) were big on personality, and it shows in their work.

POP
ART
SELF
PORTRAITS

5th Graders

I got the idea for these pop art self portraits from Modern Art for Kids. I decoupaged the computer printed photos to posterboard and they were ready for some graphic acrylic paint. We of course looked at some examples of Warhol's work to see how he used color and repetition to make a big impact.