1st Grade "Value" Money Lesson

Last fall when our district Art department was learning about African cultures, a middle school teacher who had visited South Africa spoke to us about her trip. She shared a lot of interesting/inspiring information, but what stuck out most to me to inspire an Art lesson was a comment she made about their money. She showed a photo of bills from South Africa and said (I'm paraphrasing here) "We have dead presidents (and Ben Franklin) on our money, they put animals because that's what is valued." The idea of money not just being valued, but showing what is valued stuck with me. 

We spent time looking at money- REAL money when I passed out $1 bills for observation and images of currency from the US and other countries. We watched a video about how US bills are designed and printed (careers in Art, people!), compared US bills to South African bills, and came up with features that are common in most printed money before the students designed their own bills showcasing what they value. 

I've decided to embed the complete lesson and post some of the resources we used below, as well as student work.

1st Grade Currency Design Katie Morris

Via

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

The video above is Field Trip to the Money Factory- it was created by Kids.gov and shows interviews with a banknote designer (talks about symbolism) and a script engraver.

These were the required elements of the students' designs.

I think if I teach this again, I may try using colored permanent markers for the details instead of crayon. A lot of the first graders struggled with wax-resist. Some didn't press hard enough with the crayon and some scrubbed when painting and practically dissolved their paper. They were very proud of their money and couldn't wait to take them home to show their parents. I would also like to try this with older students sometime. I bet 5th and 6th graders could make some awesome designs.

I let the students pick whatever amount they wanted their bill to be worth. If I had realized sooner that 1st grade works on number recognition to 100, I would have asked that they choose a number 1-100 to integrate some of their math curriculum.

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.

State Birthday Cake Drawings

This is my favorite of the projects I left with my sub during maternity leave.  The project was completed in 1 or 2 class periods depending on the schedule and snow days and was taught to K-3rd.  This year Kansas turned 150 and I knew there would be even more celebrating happening at school this year than any other year I could remember.  The instructions I left were for my sub to read a book called "One Kansas Farmer: A Kansas Counting Book" that I was given for Christmas a couple of years ago.  The book obviously has counting as implied by the name but had some cool facts about Kansas that I didn't even know before!  (Did you know that Kansas leads the nation in helium export?)  They talked about symbolism and our state symbols (meadowlark, bison, sunflower, etc.) before looking at a PowerPoint with slides of interestingly decorated cakes.  I said to pretty much let Kindergarten and 1st grade students draw cakes their own way but made examples of how to draw cylinders to show perspective and visually stack them to look like a layered cake.  The students drew the form of their cakes first, added symbols for Kansas, and colored with colored pencils (Kindergarten used crayons.)  I will definitely use this lesson again because of all the great things it teaches (perspective, drawing, symbolism) with a local social studies tie in.

 The Kinder-cakes!

If I had more Art time with my older students, I would have them do an Art History version.  At last year's KAEA conference, we celebrated 75 years of KAEA and had tables decorated with the coolest cake sculptures based on artists from history!  I wish I would have taken some photos to share with you all!