5th Grade
Cardboard Sculpture
Children today are losing their natural abilities to manipulate materials and think outside the box. Building animal heads out of used pizza books helps kids reclaim these skills. It also promotes an appreciation and interest in sculpture. The pre-homework for this one was to have the family eat a pizza and bring the box to school. I’ve found that local pizza shops are willing to supply a classroom set of boxes. We’ve even had our finished pieces displayed at local pizza establishments. The challenge, after looking at animal masks from cultures around the world is to have every part made of a different piece of cardboard.
Clay Critters
Working in clay is something that every child should do every year in elementary school. There need be no other reason other than the satisfaction of working the clay to make some “thing.” Bowls and animals are fine, but so are contorted blobs of clay. These were made with air-dry clay painted with tempera.
History Mural
Before we “biggy-sized” the colonial days event each class would break into small study groups of 3-5 students to study a portion of US history. In art those groups would work together to complete a mini-mural that taken together would illustrate the periods of American History the grade was studying. The actual mural drawing was preceded by mini-lessons in drawing action figures, depth, making objects 3D and color. The mini-murals also required small group communication and cooperation skills.
Masters Among Us
To pair with Colonial Days we looked at a collection of 3 English painters from the colonial era and beyond. Gainsborough represented the Colonial era, while David Hockney and one other represented more modern work. Students were asked to identify similar and different attributes of all of them. We then looked at how each would perform their art. For this project a single photo of English location was chosen. The kids first drew it and then using materials aligned with their selected artist they finished it mimicking one of the 3.
Relief-Scape
This project is an extension of the landscape painting we do in 4th grade paired with the business of building non-flat art. Students first create a watercolor wet-on-wet sky on full-size, 18x24, heavy, watercolor paper. They then create a multi-layered landscape of cardboard creating buttes, towers, arches and other area landforms. These are glued-stapled then painted and finally affixed to the sky piece.
