This is the 5th post about my 6th graders' choice art projects to end the year. You can read the first explanatory post here. These are the miscellaneous 3D projects. Clay was not an option for my students since I can only afford enough clay for each student to do one ceramic project a year. Art Straws, cardboard, and papier-mâché were used instead.

This student had to change her first plan for adding the figures after they were too flimsy. I don't think she was totally satisfied with her Art Straw stick figures but we were out of time! I also think the "go green" message was an impulse as it was scrawled in sharpie about a minute before clean up.
This student's plan had to change due to time management! He had a really cool forest built out of Art Straws in the first class period. He started painting the Art Straws in the second but made the poor choice of cleaning up early before he was finished painting his trees in the second class period. By the time I caught him, it was almost time for everyone to clean up! In the third class, he finished painting the trees. The problem with painting Art Straws is that they get kinda flimsy and floppy. He actually tried to tell me he was done with an unpainted base and falling over trees. We talked for a couple minutes and I commented that the trees looked like they were blowing over in a storm. I was happy with his solution of turning it into a hurricane-ish scene by painting the base and adding debris.
Several students asked me if they could use papier-mâché... I told them that they could, but it would take a lot of outside work. I set up the timeline that the 3rd class had to be reserved for painting so the first had to be constructing the base and the 2nd had to be for papier-mâché. One pair of students wanted to make a Gollum head (Lord of the Rings) and it was looking great but the never finished it. A few others wanted to make balls- a volleyball, a softball, and a couple basketballs. I told them it would be hard, and though it was, they did a pretty decent job for their first try. I think if they work with papier-mâché in the future, the students will be able to pack the newspaper tighter. I tried to rotate the wet forms as they dried but only being at the school 2 days a week it didn't really work out. The balls ended up with a flat side. I guess the good part is they won't roll away while displayed. :)

This student wanted to make an owl from the beginning but her idea kept evolving. She ended up building the base structure at home and bringing it back to class to finish. I told her I liked the limited color palette, though I wish the trees in the background had more definition, and maybe something to tie them in with the tree the owl is perched on.
I wasn't really sure where this student was heading when he was painting circles and gluing them to the cardboard frame, but I thought it was a fun way to reference a crowd when he was finished.

I love this. What a great reminder to us that we don't have to be heavy hnded in order to get great things.
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