I inherited a treasure trove of old Arts and Activities and School Arts magazines from the 1960s and 1970s.
Plaster sculpture cast in a wax paper milk carton. Inflated balloons create interesting negative space.
The balloons created terrific negative space. It reminded me a bit of Henry Moore’s sculptures. I thought it would be cool to try this out as a Henry Moore sculpture lesson with my art campers. We looked at some images of his work, then got busy.
The campers were able to scrape and shape the damp plaster.
It was a huge mess, of course. But fun! The kids (ages 8-11) really enjoyed the process.
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.
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.
This week fourth grade finished their foil sea creatures. If you have never tried tooling foil repouseé, you simply must! It is so much fun. If you are unfamiliar with repouseé, check out this excellent post at A Faithful Attempt blog.
We talked about the repouseé process. We are going to use a pencil to shape and press lines and patterns into our foil. We will make texture. For practice, I gave kids a piece of heavy aluminum foil and we folded it four times. The number one rule: always keep the foil on the newspaper pad. The pencil will bend the metal down into the pad.
We practiced drawing different lines (wavy, straight, zig zag) and patterns on our test foil. I showed kids how to flip the foil to the back and press lines into the back of the foil. Once kids got used to working the foil front and back, they really enjoyed the process.
Day 2
I passed out square paper sketch sheets and templates (optional – I encouraged kids to make their own design so long as it filled the square). Goal: create a sea creature with a textured body and textured background. When the sketch was approved, I gave them a square of foil. They taped the sketch to the foil and retraced their lines. then they turned over the foil and pressed more lines into the back.
Optional templates ruled to fit foil squares.
Pencil sketch and completed art
Day 3:
Color with colored Sharpies. The color makes our repouseé art looks like jewels of the sea!
Here they are on display in the school lobby for our annual Ocean Week
Options:
Skip the background. Cut out the textured sea creature. Color on both sides and hang as a mobile.
Skip the pre-cut squares and do the project on folded heavy foil.
