Category Archives: 5th grade

Andy Goldsworthy Art in the Garden

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Famous artist Andy Goldsworthy is fascinating. Our 5th graders were amazed at an artist who creates  and photographs art made from gathered leaves, mud, twigs, ice or rocks.

We began by viewing brief videos of Andy Goldsworthy on YouTube.

We discussed the repeating motifs in Mr. Goldsworthy’s work, including serpentine lines, spirals, and a circle with a hole in the center. We also looked at examples of stacked stone.

Students wend to the school garden and created temporary art works from materials found there.

 

A group of fifth graders worked together to make this dry-stacked rock arch.

Leaves arranged by color.

Early finishers made insect sculptures!

 

I took the photos initially, then turned over the camera to some early finishers who shot the rest of the photos.

Most students chose to work in pairs or groups for this project. Several said it was their favorite art project EVER! A few watched the YouTube videos again at home.

Next time you have good weather, consider an Andy Goldsworthy project.

Mini Monet Impressionist Art

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Do you love impressionism? Want to create memorable artworks? Try this Mini-Monet lesson plan from the Blick website. It even has an instructional video!

I adjusted the materials list from the Blick website. Here is what I used:

  • Shrinky Dinks shrink plastic, Frosted Ruff ‘n’ Ready, size 8″x10″, cut into quarters (tip: cut it on the paper cutter)
  • chalk pastels and spray fixative OR
  • colored pencils
  • easily removable masking tape, such as artists tape
  • color photos of impressionist art from books, notecards and calendars
  • oven or toaster oven and oven mitts
  • baking sheet
  • fine-tip gold pen (optional)
Tape the Shrinky Dink, rough side up, over a section of the impressionist book or note card. Trace image onto Shrinky Dink. Use short strokes to mimic Monet’s and other impressionists’ style.

Students tape shrink film over impressionist art, then trace with pastel or colored pencil.

Bake in the oven according to directions on the Shrinky Dink package. Shrinky Dinks shrink when baked, starting at 4″x5″ before baking and about 2″x1.5″ after. When baking Shrinky Dinks, do not remove from oven until the plastic ‘comes up’ (folds and shrinks) and ‘comes down’ (flattens). Count to 30, then remove.

After tracing, remove tape and bake plastic in oven. Here is one after shrinking.

Kids are going to want to watch this!  If you are doing this in a small group setting, let them watch the shrinking process through the oven window.

Completed Mini Monets

If you use chalk pastels, you will need to spray them with a fixative AFTER BAKING (hair spray is fine). If you don’t, they more likely to smear. You do not need to spray if you used colored pencil.

As a finishing touch, color the thickened edges of the shrunken artwork with gold marker.

Add a magnet, pin back, display as a group or on mini-easels.

This project would look great with Van Gogh’s artwork. Students will like tracing his short brushstrokes with pastel or colored pencil.

Do you have a favorite impressionism project? Leave a comment!

 

Olympic Sport Sculptures

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Olympic volleyball trophies made by fifth graders

 

Olympic archery

Sumo wrestling is NOT an Olympic event, but it makes for a cool sculpture.

Women’s gymnastics

Student designed the water polo sculpture so it is different on each side: reverse shows player with torso above water.

Want the full lesson plan?  All the details are on my earlier posts: part 1, and part 2.

I just love the Olympics!!!! My favorite summer events are men’s and women’s gymnastics.

Have you ever made an Olympic or sport project with your students?

Best of the Fair: Clay

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Everyone loves clay!  I went to the San Diego County Fair in June, and saw three fabulous clay projects in the youth art show.

1. The Golden Horses (Fifth grade and up)

Fifth graders made these horses. I love how the horse is balancing on tail and two legs.

 

These are made with some sort of clay on a wire armature.  I am not sure if it is air dry, polymer or regular ceramic clay. I think polymer clay on a floral wire and foil armature, oven baked and then sprayed gold would work. You could use all those horse calendars as reference photos, plus any model or toy horses if you have them (when I was growing up, some of my horse-crazy friends collected them).

 

Fabulous mane, tail and hooves.

2. Name Art Tile (Fifth grade and up)

Name art tile

 

Do you have a multi-slab clay cutter? I do, and it looks like this was made using two slabs. Gorgeous! Love the combination of incised and overlapping shapes. This would be a project that parents and students would treasure for many years.

3. Multi-Color Coil Bowls

Top view of the bowl

Top view of another bowl

Love the coil feet!

 

I don’t think I can guess all the steps that went into making these bowls. I will add you will have to add and dry those coil feet when the bowl is inverted – otherwise the feet will collapse under the weight of the bowl.

Happy summer!

Want to see more fair projects? Check out this post.

iPad Alphabet Photography for Fourth Grade

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Armed with camera-equipped iPads and iPods, our fourth graders spread out in our school garden in search of alphabet letters. Each student was assigned a letter to photograph.

Letter O

It was interesting to see how they completed the assignment: some students found letters in the branches of trees, some created letters from stones and twigs. Some poured water on the pavement to draw their letter. If they were absolutely stumped (get it?) , I let them use a letter from the garden signs. I asked students to take 5-10 photos of their letter.

I am happy to report the fourth graders LOVED looking for letters. They were completely engaged, and helped each other.  I heard a lot of shouts of “I found a T! Who has T?”

This week, students used their devices and the Pic Collage app to turn their best photos into a photo collage. I asked them to zoom in so that we could really see the letter – aim for making a letter so clear a kindergartener could recognize it. They emailed me their files and we reviewed them as a class.

Great work fourth graders!

Our fourth graders are in a pilot 1:1 iPad program, and it is a huge success. The goal is to turn all the photos into a free digital book downloadable through Apple’s iBooks store.

Inspiration for this project came from www.alphabetphotography.com.

UPDATE: see the completed whole-alphabet collages in this post.

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