Best Art Class Ever- 6th Grade Planets

Way back in October I was doing a music inspired lesson with 4th-6th grade. 6th Graders spend I think a whole 9-weeks studying astronomy and one of my favorite CD's is a performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets. So my music-science-art fusion Planets lesson was born. In the first class, I gave a super quick introduction to Abstract Expressionism, focusing mainly on Jackson Pollock, then went further back into Art History to introduce Wassily Kandinsky. I talked about how Kandinsky is credited with making the first purely abstract paintings and was really influenced by music. We had the same rhythm/harmony discussion as in my 4th grade Jazz Painting classes then I jumped right into the task for the day: create 4 abstract expressionistic paintings inspired by 4 of Holst's planets. The students were each given a piece of 12x18 inch white paper which they folded "hamburger" AND "hotdog" style to create 4 sections. I had primary and white colored tempera paint at each table and cups of diluted tempera paint available to the students. They had about 2-3 minutes to paint for each song. They painted with their brush trying to fill in the whole rectangle then used paint droppers to drip and splatter paint (ties in Pollock) on top.  I believe the 4 planets we listened to were Mars bringer of war, Venus bringer of peace, Jupiter bringer of jollity, and Uranus the magician.

I said in the title of this post that this was the best art class ever. I really mean that. I have never, EVER, had 6th grade students working so quietly. And they were LOVING it! Even with only a few minutes to paint each section, every student finished. I had to take a video to kind of prove it to myself because I could hardly believe how smoothly it was going.  If you watch the video, make sure you have the volume turned up so you can really get a feel for it.

After the first class I asked the students to let the extra dripped paint run off their papers into the trash can. I recommend that, otherwise your floor or counter will look like this under your drying rack.

I don't think I told the students what we would be doing with the paintings until we were done, mostly because I wanted them to fill the whole space. In the second class, the painted papers were cut apart and the students used their paintings to create a collage. I didn't really teach them anything about astronomy, but we did brainstorm some things they could include in their artwork- planets, rings, moons, stars, asteroid, etc. I gave the students compasses to use if they wanted but also demonstrated cutting a circle freehand.
TIP- Save the scraps of painted paper for students to trade for adding details or for students who missed the painting session.

I know we should let students figure things out for themselves but I did show them how to make a ring for a planet. The overlapping and cutting out negative space was really throwing most of them.

Students who had enough time used oil pastels to add details. I tried to get them to add value to their planets to make them look like forms instead of shapes but that translated to drawing circles around the edges.

 

My Judgment: Overall, I think we all enjoyed this project. I think I will try to come up with something to make the backgrounds more interesting. I didn't want them to be too complicated since there were lots of colors and patterns on the planets, but the solid black construction paper looks a little flat if they didn't have time to add oil pastels. 

1st Grade Wild Self Portraits and Wild Thing Costume

 This is a project that had a few nice results, but was overall very frustrating for me as well as the students. First, we looked at some Abstract Expressionist paintings and talked about how the style looks wild. I started by projecting Lavender Mist by Jackson Pollock and asking the students to just look and think before they said anything else. Then I asked them to share observations or opinions. Some said it was pretty while some said it was "nothing" or definitely not Art. If they said it wasn't Art, I asked them why. I told them it's ok to have different opinions but they should think about the why.

Source: nga.gov via Katie on Pinterest

I showed the first class a video of Pollock painting but they were super bored so I just showed a photo to the rest of the classes.

Source: en.wikipedia.org via Katie on Pinterest

We also looked at a de Kooning painting so I could show them an abstract style where you can still pick out some recognizable features.

Source: nelson-atkins.org via Katie on Pinterest

Up to that point, everything was going ok. My plan was for the students to make Abstract Expressionistic paintings the first day that would serve as the background for cut paper self portraits. The painting was pretty messy, and there was a clothing casualty when a para's white sweater got paint squirted all over it, but not too bad considering what they were up to! I put out tempera paint in the primary and neutral colors. I got smarter after the first class and took away the black paint.

Naked person with 3 toes...

In the second class, I demonstrated cutting and gluing construction paper shapes. I showed the students how they didn't need to cut out the part of the body that would be covered by clothes since it wouldn't show. I think only a few actually did it how I showed them and just made the arms and legs stick out from behind the clothes. Even after tons of reminders that it wouldn't show and things like "you only have 5 minutes left to work so make sure your self portrait has a face and clothes", I ended up with LOTS of little naked people, thankfully not anatomically correct! I think I can usually figure kids out but I just could not get inside a 1st graders' brain and understand why they couldn't let go of having to make the whole body then put clothes on it. I guess because they know their bellies are under their shirts in real life so they have to be under the shirts of their artwork. I dont' know. But none of us were enjoying it enough to add another class so we called it good practice with cutting and gluing and moved on to something else.

I also just realized that I never posted the Halloween costume I made for my son. Now do you understand the Where the Wild Things Are kick I was on? I thought about making a Charlie Brown costume but decided that would be too easy. :) 

I eventually decided to make my son be a wild thing. I painted bleach stripes onto a brown zip-up hooded sweatshirt then sewed some cheap brown furry fabric onto the hood. I cut slits in the fur so it would fit around the felt horns I made. I really just cut two layers of the horn shape, sewed it, then flipped it so the seam was on the inside. I kind of popped it open with my finger before pinning it down and they really stayed standing up great. They are actually still standing even after being washed since it's a fun jacket now. The pants were a little trickier. I started with a base of brown sweatpants and covered them with layers of a cream colored fabric cut to resemble the texture of the wild thing's legs from the book. I used fabric glue to help hold it in place while I sewed. I had to sew it by hand and I'm glad I checked it before sewing all the way down because there was a problem: I forgot about the elastic in the pants! When I sewed on the fabric it made the pants way to tight to pull up. So, not willing to give up, I pulled off the layers I had sewn on, sewed them together separately, and added velcro so I could just wrap it around after we got the pants on. I also added a furry looking feather boa from Hobby Lobby (my happy place) to make the tail. So in summary, it took a lot of time and problem solving, and probably didn't cost less than a store bought costume, but I'm pretty proud of it. My mom always made our costumes and I've always wanted to be that kind of mom.