4th Grade Calder Inspired Circus Sculptures- 2nd batch!

This year my elementary school chose a circus theme and I started the school year off with circus themed projects to ease into things. I have most of my elementary classes for a whole semester but 4th graders switched for 2nd quarter. I decided since the first group enjoyed the process so much, I would repeat it with the 2nd group, and I'm SO glad I did. The kids blew it out of the water! They were so engaged and wanted to keep collaborating and adding cool features that it ended up taking the bulk of their art classes. Having class on Friday left them short 2 classes due to Thanksgiving break and Christmas break starting this Friday, but I'd rather have them do a really good job on a couple projects than be rushed through more.

We started pretty much the same way- talking about Alexander Calder's work and watching part of one of his circus performances- I didn't have time to read the book "Sandy's Circus" to the students this time but it is a great book that they enjoyed! I borrowed it from my local library but you can find a read aloud video online or order from Amazon.

If you order from my link I may recieve a small commission at no extra cost to you.

After the video, I showed students the tubs of objects available for them to use. We had pipe cleaners for wire, fabric scraps, yarn, beads, buttons, gems, cardboard, and all the scraps found in the collage center and recycling bin.

This was a collaboration between 2 girls- there is a horse rider in the front and trapeze artist hanging in the back.

One of the students made Dumbo complete a feather!

Bird Man

 

This is the group that discovered the recycling bin

When one group discovered the recycling bin, they maybe went a little overboard. In the next class we talked about transforming objects so that people could understand the new purpose. This group created a tank with someone holding their breath, turned a plastic cup into a stand for the spotlight and operator, made a packing material into a nest for Bird Man, and used a pop can as his perch.

Details of the circus performers

This group became very adept at creating little performers. They would get everything formed and just ask me to hit it with hot glue. I felt more comfortable being the hot glue gun operator. I stationed myself where I could supervise everyone and they just brought pieces to me to glue.

If you have a lot of random "craft" items or found objects taking up cabinet space, this project would be a great way to use some up in a creative way. If you ever want to do wire sculptures with your younger students but don't have the materials to do it safely, pipe cleaners can be an easy substitute!

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!

4th Grade Clay Boys

This year my grade school chose a theme of "Oh the Places You'll Go". For Family Literacy Night in the fall, each grade had a different country to learn about- the students gave reports, performed dances, and just generally showed what they knew in a fun way. 4th grade chose Russia so I set about trying to design a lesson connected to Russia. I was first researching Russian art and getting a lot of depressing works but then a friend reminded me that she always looks at children's books- duh! I was able to request a few folktales from our library network and the one that gave me the best idea was Clay Boy, a folk tale retold by Mirra Ginsburg.

In the story, an old couple fashion themselves a little boy out of clay and he comes to life!- this reminded us of the Little Gingerbread Man. The big difference is that the clay boy eats EVERYTHING and everyone with a goat saving the day at the end.

I recently posted the lesson on the smARTteacher so feel free to check it out!

Completion time:

2 sessions; 40 minutes per session

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Objectives:

1. SWBAT understand what a folktale is.
2. SWBAT create a simple figure out of clay
3. SWBAT add details to their projects to personalize

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Materials:

1. red earthenware clay
2. clay tools
3. fabric scraps
4. scissors
5. glue (students used elmer's and I used hot glue when needed)
6. yarn

Need these materials? Visit Blick!

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Procedure:

1. Introduction
-The teacher will explain that folktales are stories passed down through generations
-Clay Boy is based off of a Russian folktale
2. Read Clay Boy or show video
-discuss: does the story remind you of anything else? Some will say it reminds them of the little gingerbread man
3. Work with clay
-demonstrate forming clay into a figure starting with a fat cylinder or rectangular shape
-cut clit to free legs and arms
-pinch to form appendages and shape head
-pose figure into sitting or standing
4. Let clay dry and fire in kiln
5. Finish sculptures
-students cut fabric scraps and form into clothing
-glue in place

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Related Resources:

1. Clay Boy by Mirra Ginsburg
2. Youtube video of Clay Boy reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ7Fuy-wnOU

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THE STANDARDS

Visual Arts Standard 1:
Understanding and applying media, techniques, and processes

[K-4] Students use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories

[K-4] Students use art materials and tools in a safe and responsible manner

[K-4] Students know the differences between materials, techniques, and processes

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Visual Arts Standard 2:
Using knowledge of structures and functions

[K-4] Students know the differences among visual characteristics and purposes of art in order to convey ideas

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Visual Arts Standard 6:
Making connections between visual arts and other disciplines

[K-4] Students identify connections between the visual arts and other disciplines in the curriculum

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THE FEATURES

Elements/Principles:

Form, Texture

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Media:

Ceramics

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Cross-Curriculum:

Multicultural Studies

4th Grade Choice Printmaking

I'm trying to finish up posting some projects leftover from last spring before I'm overrun with new projects! For the first year ever, each of my intermediate grades had a chance to print. When you only see students 18 times in the whole year, it can be tricky to fit in everything that you want to. The printmaking project was totally open for 4th grade, meaning that there was no suggested theme. I did talk to the students about their plans before they began to transfer the drawing onto the foam. 

 Some students made nonobjective designs while others focused on interests. I enjoy both.

Tomorrow night I'll be offering printmaking as a hands-on activity during my community's art walk. I'm excited to share printmaking with kids and families in the community since so many people have never had the chance to try it out.

Weaving with "Real Yarn"!

This fall was the first time I had taught weaving* to students with anything other than construction paper. I had always waited because I didn't have enough looms. Since I've been trying out choice based art this year, I decided to give it a go, not expecting the project to be so popular! I offered weaving to 4th graders and it quickly became apparent that I would need to make more looms. I think out of 110ish 4th graders, there were only about 5 who chose another project. At least 2 of those students tried it out later. I had about 30 chipboard looms that I had ordered. Thankfully, I have a big supply of mat board scraps and cardboard. It was super easy and pretty quick to make looms.

*Since we were studying American Indian cultures, I told them the story of Spider Woman and how she brought weaving to the Navajo people. Read the story HERE.

I used a ruler and a box knife to cut rectangles. I didn't worry about measuring, just getting my edges straight. Next, I took a big pile and marked little dashes in half inch increments on two opposite sides. I did this while trapped at my desk pumping. Oh, the things working moms do. :) After marking the sides, I used a pair of scissors to cut little slits. Some students helped with this step, and I had to cut the slits a bit deeper later since I didn't explain that the tiny marks were just to show where to cut, not the exact size the cuts should be. Lesson learned.

Here is one of the mat board looms.

Someone pointed out that I could have just skipped the measuring step and eyeballed the cuts, putting the same number of slits in each side. That would have made it a bit faster, but having grown up with a perfectionist carpenter father, it's not in my nature! I have more mat board scraps that I will turn into looms at my other school, and I'm also going to try using foam meat trays to see how that goes. Cardboard worked ok, but the mat board looms are holding up better.

 One of the hardest parts was just getting the looms warped. It was a hard concept to loop around the notches at the top and come back down the front instead of wrapping all the way around front and back. I had a pretty big stash of yarn from my predecessor that was stored in a big cardboard box. I got most of it untangled and displayed in an over the door shoe holder. I added some leftover yarn from projects I'd done at home and my mom scored some yeins of neon colored yarn at a garage sale. The brightly colored yarns, textured yarns, and variegated yarns were the most popular. I let students totally be in charge of which and how many colors they would use. Some worked in patterns or color families, some just experimented or went with their gut, choosing yarns they were drawn to.

I had just planned to show how to weave in stripes, but some students really picked that up quickly and wanted more. Two other options I demonstrated were splitting the weaving and rejoining it, and making zigzag patterns.

 I usually just said anyone who was interested could come around a table to see how to make the different patterns. I had SO MANY kids in my room during recess to work on their weavings. They were so excited to work with "REAL YARN"! They were even telling younger siblings about it and talking about plans to make their own looms at home. They were discussing how big of a loom they would need to make a blanket, how much they would sell said blankets for ($10, what a steal!), and talking about what they would do with their projects.

The other hardest part was tying all the knots to take weavings off looms. With the risk of sounding much older than my 27 years, "kids these days" don't know how to tie simple knots! This took a lot of time and help.

I needed a way to display the weavings in the hall, and what worked best for us, was to connect the projects to a piece of black construction paper with one staple and have the students write their names in colored pencil. We used the RoseArt Metallic Colored Pencils I was given and they worked great on black paper. I'm usually a Crayola girl but really like these RoseArt pencils. I couldn't find them when ordering supplies, but I just located them on Amazon.

When the projects came down, it was easy to remove the one staple without damaging the weaving.

 Most students finished in 3-4 classes but some are not yet finished. I didn't set a size requirement or anything like that, so as the semester went on, weaving projects started shrinking! We ended up with some funny little weavings, like one below that's around 15 rows. These were sometimes made by students who just weren't that in to weaving, but more often by those that tried and tried, but struggled.

 6th graders will have the option to weave next, and since most of them wove with yarn last year (CYOA: Weaving), I'm excited to see what they do this year!

4th Grade Paper Quilts

Are you familiar with the quilters of Gee's Bend? Gee's Bend is an isolated community in Alabama with a strong tradition of quiltmaking passed down through generations. Since being "discovered", the quilts have been shown in museums across the United States.

I've been fascinated by the quilts since I read an article about them sometime in college. My students were equally fascinated by the quilts! We looked at lots of photos of the quilts (see beautiful examples here) and watched a few videos including this one that is sort of a summary produced for the AlaArts Awards and some really short interviews with the quilters (first one here, links to others on the side of the video). Here is a really cool resource, the Quilts of Gee's Bend in Context that covers the history and geography in addition to the art of Gee's Bend.

After the videos and discussion about the quilts, including how it's kind of cool that they're not "perfect", how a quilt is constructed, and what kinds of shapes are used for the pieces, the students started making paper quilts. They used construction paper for the background and on top, either used construction paper pieces, magazine images (cut apart as if they were fabric), or a combination of the two to complete their quilts. It was really interesting to see the images the students combined and how some of them really started to think about color harmonies.

 Some students used their cut shapes to make images instead of just compositions, like the thunder storm and face below.

Here is part of a student artist statement. The part about not knowing what art was comes from one of the interviews we watched.

"I made quiltizm. It is based off a little town who made quilts but they didn't know what art was. Then a lot of quilts went into a museum. I was inspired to make something based on the quilts." 

Show me the Symmetry!

Before Greg Percy visited, I made a point to use one of his songs with each grade level. 4th graders listened to the song about symmetry (I think it's called "I'm Beside Myself" but I don't have the CD with me to check.) The songs covers two kinds of symmetry- bilateral and rotational. The 4th graders were excited to tell me that they had just been reviewing symmetry in math class so I guess the timing was good! After the song and a PowerPoint I made with images for both kinds of symmetry, the students' assignment was to "show me the symmetry!" They could make anything they wanted as long as it somehow showed a type of symmetry. The overall composition could have been symmetrical or the object the drew could have been symmetrical.

We all know that student combinations can lead to classes with very different personalities... three out of my five 4th grade classes were excited, got ideas right away and jumped right into their projects. I encouraged them to play with some geometric shape tiles I inherited if they were stuck on coming up with an idea. Two classes needed a little more guidance to get started. I showed them how they could fold a paper in half, draw a shape on one side starting from the fold, cut, and open to have a symmetrical shape to turn into something. I showed the same concept but with their name forming the shape and that was a popular option. 

 Some students stuck to formal compositions made entirely out of geometric shapes while others figured out how to represent something that's important to them... like Dr.Who!