2013 Tactile Paintings

This is one of my favorite lessons and one of the few that I repeat with my 2nd graders each year. (See the 2011 post here, 2012 post here.) The students learn about the late Andy Lakey, "Painter for the Blind", and his tactile paintings. The students consider how we use our senses to experience art before using sand to make a touchable painting with lots of texture.

I made an Instructional Resource for one of my graduate classes for this lesson which I used to introduce the artist and concepts to my students and will share below in case you find it helpful in your classroom.

  Instructional Resource: Tactile Paintings by Katie Morris

In past years, I have asked students to make nonobjective designs. This year I gave more choices and some students used the sand to make a hidden message- a design or words that would be hard to see but the viewer could feel. The students used crayon to plan their designs before tracing with bottled glue, covering with a sprinkling of sand, and dumping the excess back into the sand container.

In the second class period, the students paint. The last two years, I have limited the students to either a warm or cool color palette to help them achieve color harmony. This year, I talked to the students about warm and cool colors, but allowed them to choose their own color palette. I just figured there can be beauty in unexpected choices and I didn't need to limit them to my adult aesthetic.

Some students use their sand lines as divisions, changing colors where the shape changes or outlining the sand at the end.

Some students tried using the sand to make a picture or hidden message.

While the paintings may not be as harmonized as in previous years, I think this was more valuable overall. The students got to try different combinations and see what would happen! I think that letting the students make their own discoveries is a more authentic kind of learning than me solving the harmony problem for them.

2nd Grade Asian Dragons

 My 2nd graders learned about Asian dragons during our East Asian study this fall. I used the same PowerPoint with 2nd grade and the 4th grade dragon lessons. 

 Dragons

Dragons are a great way to show the students how the "same thing" can be very different in another part of the world. After the PowerPoint presentation, I showed a video of a Chinese street vendor making a sugar painting of a dragon. Today I found a shorter version of the same vide. Seeing how this man draws a dragon in about 2 minutes using flowing lines was really helpful.

The students could draw any style of Asian dragon they wanted to. We reviewed the number of claws- Japanese dragons have 3 claws, Korean have 4, and Chinese have 5- and the students decided where their dragon should be from. The dragons could be any color or pose, as long as they were Asian style instead of European.

I originally planned to have the students draw their dragons on the black construction paper, outline with color sticks so it would be easier to see, then paint parts with tempera paint. I only did this on one day because the students were having a really hard time controlling the paint. The classes that started with tempera ended up needing an extra day while the others were done in 2. In the other classes, the students used construction paper crayons and/or color sticks to complete their dragons and then if there was time, I let them add touches of metallic gold paint. Dragons are magical, after all. The metallic paint was a HUGE hit and it cost me less than a dollar to let all 130-ish 2nd graders embellish their artwork. I just picked up a small bottle of acrylic craft paint at WalMart and even have some leftover.

I don't have photos yet of the top dragons since I was in a hurry to get them to the Cultural Heritage Week art show and following display at our district office. I'll try to add photos of my artwork "winners" when I get them back in January.

Students checking out dragons at the Cultural Heritage Week Art Show.