8th Grade Animal Collages

Last fall was a doozy. Groups of students in and out of quarantine. My two older kids in school were both quarantined at different times so I taught remotely more than once. I had a large 8th grade class for the size of my room which made social distancing impossible though we did our best with sneeze guards, assigned seats, sanitization of tables, and individual supply bags. Students did a lot of drawing because I was never able to get an order of watercolor in and my trays were given to the high school students. Finally at the end of the semester we did a collage project, which the students finished while I was once again teaching remotely!

I found that students needed more structured choices than in previous years so we went with the theme of animals since everyone loves animals! This is the slides presentation I made to introduce collage and show different styles.

The students had a lot of different papers to utilize in their projects. There were construction paper and painted paper scraps, magazines, and a big stack of scrapbook paper that was donated. The scrapbook paper had lots of texture and patterns so it was a nice addition.

I was so pleased with how the animal collages turned out, and though I didn't get to interact with the students a lot while they were finishing up, I'm sure they had to be proud of their work too!

2D Boot Camp: Collage and Monoprinting

After painting in my high school 2D Boot Camp, students also tried out collage and printmaking. For collage, I had each student make a small torn paper work. I was inspired to try out torn paper collage a couple years ago when I came across the work of Elizabeth St. Hilaire who is known for her "paper paintings". It was kind of a refreshing way to approach collage since it was so different than what I'd done before. I gave students the option of doing a collage on paper that was around 5x7 inches or doing something more involved on larger paper. Most of the small collages were completed in a couple days. Students had access to a tub of magazines, construction paper scraps, sheet music, and other found papers.

 For the next boot camp, I demonstrated a few mono printing techniques using the 5x5 inch student gelli plates I ordered. I had a box of texture tools, several different colors of acrylic craft paint, and a few stencils/masks I'd made. Some students created their own masks and got really cool results. I didn't require the students to make their own masks or stencils since the purpose of this was to just try out mono printing and get used to the process.

The antlers and fish were masks created by a student.

I like to show the positive and negative result of prints. This one was a peacock feather first used as a mask then the feather was removed and the ghost which shows the texture was printed on top of a solid color.

Students have been making two dimensional projects in the medium of their choice and we'll be starting 3D boot camp soon!

Torn Paper Snow People

Last year I saw a post on Art Makes Kids Smart about using "GOOSe paper"- Good On One Side in Art projects. I thought this was brilliant and a way to make reusing fun so students don't feel like they are using trash. I used the idea with 1st grade students to make torn paper snow people. I'm pretty sure this was a two class period project. The students used 9x6 inch colored construction paper for the background, tore GOOSe paper for the snowy ground, then used more GOOSe paper for the body of the snowperson and construction paper scraps for the accessories. We finished it off with crayon details. Glue sticks worked great and I really liked the personality in the students' work. 

I must have let the students use scissors to create the accessories but there was a no scissor rule for the first day with the snow.

  

1st Grade Tornado Safety

 This is the 3rd year I've taught a variation of a tornado safety lesson. The first year it was pretty much just a collage. Last year I added more mixed media elements, and while it improved the visual, I still wasn't completely happy. This year I am much more satisfied. The difference this year, is that the students wrote their own safety tips. I was afraid to do this before because I wasn't sure if I would have time to read all of them, and I didn't want the students to write something that would actually be dangerous when we were learning about something that could be a real life and death situation. I emailed all the 1st grade teachers about having the students write tips in the classroom and bringing them to Art class ready to go. Fewer than half remembered to send them (I'll send a reminder on the day of Art class next year) but the classes who forgot were able to write them in Art class without too much trouble.

 Day 1: *Tornado safety info, geometric shape review, give students primary colored tempera paint to paint squares or rectangles for base of house at bottom of paper, students cut triangles from newspaper to form the roof for their houses, glue newspaper to background. (Start with squares of newspaper and show the students how to cut diagonally corner to corner or cut off a corner with one straight line to form their triangle. This saves lots of time and frustration if they actually listen.)

John Steuart Curry, Tornado Over Kansas, 1929, Muskegon Museum of Art

*Edit: I forgot to say that we also discussed John Steuart Curry's painting Tornado Over Kansas. We pointed out how the family is taking cover to stay safe.

Day 2: Students use crayon to color background/sky while supplies are being passed out, demonstrate tearing 1/2 sheet of black construction paper into an organic tornado shape, glue tornado onto paper, use color stick or opaque colored pencil to write safety tips directly onto black paper tornado, add more details with crayon. (The students may be frustrated by not using scissors, but push through! It's good for developing fine motor skills and makes the edges of the tornado soft which is good since they are not solid things.)

This project could be adapted to help review and prepare students for any natural disaster or safety situation. I like to do this in the spring around tornado season when we start having hallway drills at school.

 I decided to make a hallway display with the tornados this year since they were finished a little earlier- last year they were just finished in time to go home before the end of the year. When students finished early, I asked them to think of a word that they associate with tornadoes. They wrote the word on a big torn paper tornado I made out of butcher paper and labeled with "Tornadoes Are..."

Here's the hallway display. I used the big tornado and picked 10 pieces of student work that had different (accurate) tips on them. I cut out my letters and used a 1 inch round punch for the negative space in the letters. I thought it was kind of fun. Then I used the resulting 1 inch circles to make a dotted line under the word "Safety".