Category Archives: Lesson plans

Printing with Modeling Clay

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Would you like to try a creative printmaking project? Something inexpensive, that can be done quickly and easily with no fancy tools or equipment? Try printing with modeling clay. This brilliant lesson from the Filth Wizardry blog was a huge hit with our fourth graders.

Students created printed suns or sunflowers using modeling clay and stamp pads. Allow 2-3 40-minutes sessions.

Materials:

  • Modeling Clay, AKA plasticine clay (note: I got a pack of 24 sticks of modeling clay at my local dollar store)
  • black stamp pads
  • bamboo skewers
  • paper
  • colored pencils
  • pencil and eraser
  • circle template
  • paper to cover table

Class 1: Experiment with modeling clay stamp printing

Our fourth graders began their printmaking project by experimenting with the clay stamp printing. They made a variety of marks on the clay, pressed the clay onto a black stamp pad, and printed on a piece of copy paper.

They printed clay coils and spirals. One boy took an imprint of the sole of his shoe and printed that! Another created a clay pretzel. They created clay hearts and alphabet letters. After a few prints, they smooshed the clay and started again. It was fabulously fun.

Clean up is easy. Since modeling clay never dries out and is reusable, we just placed the stamp pads, clay balls and skewers in our table bins until next class. We used baby wipes to clean the clay (but not all the ink!) off hands after class, then used the wipes to scrub any clay that might have got on the table.

Class 2: Print a sun or sunflower

We began the session by viewing a brief video of sun art  from CBS-TV Sunday Morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgiGKlGShY4

Student used the templates to trace a circle in the center of the paper. Then the fun began!

Begin by tracing a circle template. Then use the modeling clay to create individual facial feature stamps.

The fourth graders used the modeling clay to create facial feature stamps, sun beam stamps, petal and leaf stamps.

Fourth grade sun, printed and ready to color.

After printing, they colored their prints with colored pencils.

Coloring in a sunflower print with colored pencils.

 

Printed sun with colored pencil

Optional finishes:

Class 3:

Paint completed print with tempera cake:

Completed prints can be painted immediately with cake tempera.

This example is printed with ink pad, colored with colored pencil, then immediately painted with tempera cake. The sheer paint looked great over the print but did not cover stray ink fingerprints. And some had A LOT of stray fingerprints.

If you want a clean look to ALL the finished artworks, you may want to have students cut out their colored work and mount to colored paper.

Have fun! Your students are guaranteed to love printing with modeling clay!

Thanks for visiting! Don’t forget to please vote for 2012 Art Ed Blog of the Year, which you can do by clicking this link and voting for K-6 Art! Voting open through December 14, 2012.

How to Make a Calder Mobile

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I love Alexander Calder! I teach a Calder wire project each year, but I have never successfully made a Calder-inspired mobile. Until now!

I recently received this 1975 edition of Making Things: Book 2. The Handbook of Creative Discovery by Ann Wiseman. Inside this gloriously illustrated book I found these  instructions for making Calder mobiles:

Making Things Book 2 – Handbook of Creative Discovery by Ann Wiseman. ISBN-10: 0316948519

 

Easy to follow step by step illustrations for a variety of mobiles

 

I decided to test it out with items I had on hand in the art room.

Materials for first mobile:

  • 18-inch pre-cut Stem Wire (AKA floral wire) 20 gauge
  • construction paper
  • scissors
  • hole punch
  • pliers (note: I didn’t have any pliers so I just did this with my hands)
  • AND A BALANCING FINGER 🙂

 

Materials for making a simple Calder-inspired mobile

 


Ms. Wiseman tells us mobiles are built from the bottom up. Aha!

Success! A 4-tier mobile!

Now for my second mobile. I made this mobile using Ann Wiseman’s illustrations and Peel & Stick Foam Sheets.

Calder-inspired mobile made with wire and self-adhesive craft foam.

To add interesting organic shapes, sandwich wires between matching pieces of self-adhesive craft foam.

If you choose to make these multiple tier wire mobiles, try it yourself first, be patient, and expect a lot trial and error. Balancing those wires is tricky and takes practice. I think these projects would be great for middle and high school students.

If you want to try this with a whole class of upper elementary students, I would keep it simple. Stick with one or two wires. Check out this project from Meet the Masters. I like how they have three degrees of difficulty and incorporate a stabile as a base.

Illustration from Meet the Masters website.

 

Here are some more ideas for Calder mobiles for kids:

If you love Calder, you might like my previous Calder posts:

Enjoy!

Have you ever made a mobile with your students? 

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Note: This post contains affiliate links.

Note: post updated 12/30/13

Leaf ‘Collage’ + Photography

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Want to try a leaf collage project? Want your leaves to stay fresh and bright forever? Skip the glue/wax paper/laminator and try a camera instead!

Third graders arranged leaves into animal shapes, then photographed their art. Allow one 40-minute class for this ‘collage’ lesson.

Third graders just completed their leaf collages, inspired by the book Look What I Did with a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi.

In the book, M. Sohi arranged leaves on a white background to create fanciful animals, then photographed them. Click here to see more examples.

To prepare for this lesson, you need to gather a variety of leaves and flatten them. I placed the leaves between the pages of an old phone book. Plan to do this at least a couple of days in advance so the leaves will be really flat. You can also ask kids to bring in leaves from home

On the day of class, cover tables with white paper to create a backdrop and spread out the leaves.

Cover tables with white paper to create a unified backdrop for the collages.

Students arranged the leaves to resemble animals.  Butterflies were very popular!

Student arranges a leaf butterfly.

We used camera-equipped iPods to photograph our artworks. Our third grade is 1:1 iPod Touch so each child was able to take photos of their own creations.

Students used camera-equipped iPods to photograph their collages.

Students then rearranged their leaves and repeated the process. Most of our third graders made 3-5 animals during the 40 minute class.

Third Grade Student Work:

Ashley’s alligator

 

Deer

 

Mouse

Fish

One of the benefits of this method is that students can re-use and share leaves. Remind your students not to crumble the leaves, and you can reuse them for multiple classes. Students can work alone, in pairs or in groups – there is no argument over who takes the work home because everyone can have a digital copy of the work.

Next class we will learn to rotate and crop our photos, and how to email them.

Display options:

  • Upload to Artsonia
  • Email the images home, or put them up on the class wiki
  • Create a large class poster of all the images for the art show
  • Students can write a paragraph about their animals, or illustrate a story.

For further inspiration, check out the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. The artist used real fallen leaves to create her illustrations.

 

 

Warm and Cool Color Fall Leaves

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It’s fall – time for a fall leaf project! This lesson takes just two 40-minute sessions and covers:

  • warm and cool colors
  • stenciling
  • organic shapes
  • positive and negative space
  • symmetry

Materials:

  • cardstock, cut into rectangles
  • pencils and erasers
  • scissors
  • white construction paper
  • oil pastels in warm colors (red, orange, yellow) (note: compensated affiliate link)
  • liquid watercolors in cool colors (purple, blue, green)
  • kosher salt (optional)

Leaf silhouettes

 

Session 1:

We looked at the silhouettes of fall leaves. We talked about the variety of leaf shapes. We discussed the difference between the organic leaf shapes and geometric shapes.

Next we created our stencils: students folded their cardstock, and drew a simple 1/2 leaf on the fold (note: don’t bother with a stem in your stencil design).

About 90% of second graders were able to design and cut a simple leaf stencil independently on their first attempt. As an alternative, you could cut stencils for your students.

Once we created the stencils we noticed they were symmetric. We also defined the leaf-shaped hole as the negative space and the leaf piece as the positive space.

Students stenciled multiple leaves . Some swapped stencils with their friends. After stenciling, they added a stem line to each leaf.

Paint leaves with cool color watercolors.

Session 2:

Students painted the leaves with liquid watercolors. They loved to see the oil pastel resist the paint. After painting, they had the option of sprinkling kosher salt on their wet art before placing their art on the drying rack.

Second grade results

Fall leaves with salt added.

Fall leaves with salt added.

The project was extremely successful. The students really enjoyed the process, and reviewed a lot of art concepts.

This lesson was inspired by  this post on Kids Art Market and this post on Use Your Colored Pencils.

Do you have a favorite fall leaves project?

Kindergarten Clay Handprints

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Want to make clay handprints for a crowd but don’t have a slab roller? Save yourself some time –  get a multi-slab cutter.

The multi-slab clay cutter.

Multi-slab cutter easily slices a 25-lb. bag of clay into identical tiles.

Prep for the handprints was a breeze: cut the clay, smooth with damp sponge and print!  I added name and date with a wooden skewer. The tiles are not perfectly square so I gave some a quick trim with a metal-edged ruler.

Kindergarten handprints

The multi-slab cutter makes 24 tiles at once and is a HUGE time saver compared to rolling and cutting out each tile individually. If you don’t have a slab roller this is the way to go.

I will let these dry 7-10 days, then bisque fire. They should be glazed and ready to go in time for the holidays. Parents love them as a holiday gift.

I read about the multi-slab roller on Deep Space Sparkle and Mini Matisse. Thanks so much for the tip!

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