4th grade Calder Inspired Circus Sculptures

Each year my elementary school starts the year with a theme and this year the theme is circus! I like to use that theme as a starting point for each grade's first art classes of the year. This year my 4th graders looked at Alexander Calder's circus and then had choice of a whole bunch of materials to use for their own circus sculptures.

To begin the lesson, I read the book "Sandy's Circus" to the students. I borrowed it from my local library, but here's the Amazon link if you'd like to buy it. 

(If you purchase with my link I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

After reading the book, I showed the students part of the following video where Alexander Calder performs his circus!

I pulled out a tub of pipe cleaners to serve as our wires. In my cabinet I also found buttons, feathers, sequins, beads, other "crafty" materials that were donated, and found objects. I put the tubs out on the table and the students were able to take what they needed buffet style. 

I cut pieces of cardboard down for bases and showed how to attach things by poking holes, making slots, using buttons, etc. Of course students invented their own methods and some things required glue.

Feathers make for very fluffy lions.

While some of the sculptures are more abstract than others, I saw a lot of problem solving and experimentation, which I think is more important than perfectly polished artworks.

Here is the display. There is even someone on a flying trapeze hanging from a support!

Dynamic Cardboard Relief Sculptures

 
Last October I presented a two day workshop at the Kansas Art Education Association convention titled "Dynamic Cardboard Relief Sculptures".
I went through some tips about working with cardboard and options for working with different grade levels. Then, since we were all art teachers, I pretty much did a quick demo and let everyone work! I worked on my own example and circulated, but they didn't really need any help. It was really fun to have the time to work and complete a project and see what the other art teachers came up with. Take a look!

This tiger was AWESOME!

Some people made one big project over the two days and others made multiple smaller projects.

 This compass project looked great with the two different colors of cardboard.

 I made a portrait of Chip Taylor, the founder of Monarch Watch, since I was thinking about Unsung Heroes at the time. I later spray painted it gold.

 Some participants used spray paint (the two above sprayed from different directions) and some used acrylic. Others left the cardboard as is.

6th grade Cardboard Construction

Fitting 3D work is so hard for me. When I interviewed they told me that the program was set up for mostly 2D work. We always do a clay project (with choices) and while this year there were a few more options for 3D projects during our Cultural Heritage studies (jewelry and shields), I really intended to open up a sculpture center earlier. With everything else we have to fit in and only seeing my 4th-6th grade students for 40 minutes every other week, it just kept getting pushed back until it finally seemed to fit in the schedule at the end of April. 6th was the only grade to get to do cardboard construction as the only place to store projects was on top of some tall cabinets and there was only enough room for one grade. Maybe this year I'll figure out how to rotate and start earlier so that each intermediate grade gets a turn...

When I introduced cardboard sculpture, we talked about "relief" and "in the round". I don't have enough box knives to go around, and honestly don't trust all my students to use them responsibly, so my solution was to break down larger sheets of gathered up cardboard into manageable pieces that could be cut with scissors into the shapes the students desired if they wanted something other than rectangles. I showed how slits/notches are one of the easiest ways to attach cardboard and loved that several students came up with other attachments like poking cardboard through holes. A few notches were a little loose and required a dot of hot glue to secure the pieces, but most in the round projects did not necessitate glue. Relief sculptures could be secured with school glue since they were laid flat to dry.

This student used small cardboard pieces to attach and "float" his Pac-Man pieces.

Two relief sculptures. Do you remember learning to make "S"s like that? I remember spending a lot of time doodling "SMILE" with that style of letter. The paw print relief sculpture was with school spirit for our mascot, the panther.

Some students chose to paint their projects while others liked the raw look of the plain cardboard.

A lot of these projects seem like models of monumental sculptures. My 3D professor in college said to imagine you were a tiny person walking in and around and over the piece to see if it would be interesting.

I also showed how cardboard is made of two flat layers with corrugation in the middle. Several students experimented with revealing the corrugated texture in their sculptures.

 Here are some great TAB construction/sculpture ideas that I may try to implement in the coming school year
A size tester box to make sure projects are of a suitable size for storage (and not hogging materials)
Limiting most 3D projects to one day, which would eliminate the storage issue...
Attachment challenge/test students must pass before working in 3D center (wish I had time for this!)

6th Choice- 3D Works

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. 

If this little sculpture could've stood on its own, I would have loved to show you more than one angle. While the student did some things the hard way- like making each appendage out of a separate Art Straw instead of bending one in half to form the legs- it was a pretty big step for him. When it came time to make the shield, I saw a lot of collaboration. The artist had made the front of the shield but was struggling to figure out how to make his warrior hold it. I was about to fall into old habits and jump right in with a suggestion, when the students he was sitting with beat me to it. Even a couple of students with, shall we say, low motivation were eager to help him solve the problem. I think he ended up making a handle and sliding the arm through it.

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 tried "cheater" papier-mâché. One of the other elementary art teachers in my district tried covering newspaper forms with a thick layer of mod podge instead of using a traditional papier-mâché technique. It worked pretty well! I think it was especially effective on the solar system project so that the student didn't have to cover the whole black base board. The student sprayed tempera paint to make the look of a stars and it looked really good. Then he gave into one of those impulses and added the orange brush strokes all over the background at the last minute. I think those impulses are part of artistic development. I remember even in high school having a friend in art class just tell me to stop when I was tempted to take a project too far!

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.

This student had a lot of fun. She used air dry clay she had at home to make her dog and brought it in the 3rd class period to add to her base. She asked if we had tissue paper to make the foliage and I found some in the closet. She asked if she could go outside to look for sand to add to her path, but I saved her the trouble and brought some play sand over from my other school. The only thing she didn't finish was a butterfly she intended to add on the thin piece of reed sticking up from the center of her base.

3rd Grade Darumas

Every Art class, K-12, in my district had at least one lesson focused on East Asian cultures to prepare for Cultural Heritage Week this year. We had learned about Darumas- Japanese dolls- but I hadn't thought about how I might use it until I saw this post from Phyl at There's a Dragon in my Art Room! Her 6th grade students used plastic Easter eggs as the base for a papier mache Daruma doll, then painted. I figured I'd give it a shot with 3rd grade- they'd never used papier mache before and we don't do a ton of 3D projects due to a LARGE enrollment and limited storage. 6th graders would be able to handle this a lot better! I bought the largest Easter eggs I could find in quantity after Easter last year and even then, I think the small size was a little tricky for them. I also goofed and forgot to take newspaper to school so we had to use phonebook pages, which don't go on quite as smoothly for some reason. Despite this being a challenging project, it was good for the students to get more 3D experience in a new medium while learning a little about another culture.

To prepare the eggs, we (my student teacher and I) rolled pieces of masking tape to hold the eggs upright. We opened the eggs and poured some plaster in the bottom. The plaster worked well overall, but some students got a little carried away and shook so much that the plaster came loose! :)

You may have noticed that the Darumas only have a pupil in one eye. The owner draws or paints in one pupil as they set a goal or make a wish and don't add the other pupil until they have achieved their goal or their wish came true!

2nd Grade Clay Projects- Transportation

I was on a big kick of coordinating my clay lessons with grade level curriculum this year. I looked to the 2nd grade Social Studies units for ideas. They spend a lot of time on Native American tribes but I don't feel like I know enough about tribes from our area to do a lesson that wouldn't be stereotypical at this point. (I have been trying to research the Art of tribes that live/lived in NE Kansas but haven't had a ton of luck so far.) I decided to table that idea until I can find more information and instead, use the topic of "Transportation" which they also study.

At the beginning of the first class period, the students told me what "transportation"means and brainstormed different kinds. Gotta activate that prior knowledge! Then I demonstrated- I reviewed 4S attachments (score, slip, squish, smooth), pinch pots, coils, and showed how to form an animal starting with a ball and pressing in a "+" to divide the clay into sections which are pulled for legs. The students could use any hand-building techniques they wanted to sculpt any type of transportation. We had one class for building and the next for painting.

I thought a foot was clever- walking is, after all, a type of transportation.

Horses were pretty popular. The horse on the right lost its tail so we glued on yarn to make a new one.

This sail boat was made from a pinch pot base, a coil for the mast, and a slab for the sail.

 Some students included people, like in the canoe (with pipe cleaner oars) and on the horse above.

Cars were popular...

I love this helicopter.

We also had motorcycles, bicycles, school buses, an elephant (they saw someone ride an elephant before), a scooter, and even a flying saucer. You can see more in our Artsonia gallery.