6th Grade Aboriginal Sand Paintings

I had posted previously that the last unit in 6th grade was going to be an Indigenous Cultures unit.  We just BARELY finished!  One class completely finished their projects and the other class has one more art class this week to finish their sand paintings!  (Check out some samples of this project that I did with Studio Art when I did my student teaching.)

Students designed their sand paintings using one Australian animal and at least 3 Aboriginal symbols on 6"x 6" Masonite board.  We primed the board with gesso and then when dry, transferred the design on the board.  I had the students do one color of sand at a time.  They squeezed the glue onto the designs (and used a paintbrush to spread it if need be), sprinkled the sand on, dumped the extras onto a folded piece of tag board, and then dumped it back into the sand bottle.  They did the background last, and then glued on beans, split peas, etc. if wanted.

I was hoping to have enough time to get into a Dreamtime story or two, but we won't this year, however I still wanted to share the awesome website I found that deals with Aboriginal Dreamtime stories.  It's called Dust Echoes. There are video versions of each story on-line that you can watch, or you can print out the PDF study guide for each story.  The study guide contains the story with teacher notes on the side to explain what the story is about.  It has a page of classroom activities that can be done with the story, as well as student worksheets that have a variety of questions and activities.  Definitely take the time to check out this website...it is so worth it!

Community Helpers Cityscape

It's taken a while to get these done, but we finally did it!  About a month back, the librarian asked me if I could do a project with 2nd graders that related to community helpers...i.e. police men, emergency workers, firemen, etc.  While we finished up our gyotaku prints, I brainstormed ideas and finally came up with this project!  I searched Pinterest up and down to see if anyone else had done any community helper projects in art class, and found some little ideas that helped me build my big idea.

The first thing that we did was talk about cityscapes versus landscapes.  We had previously done this winter landscapes back at Christmas time (to which I just realized I never did a post about, but found the idea on Pinterest...), so this was a good project to introduce the other 'scape'.

We looked at a power point, did a review game, and then looked at the symbolism and characteristics of important buildings in a community.  On the first day, I had students draw their city.  They had to draw a road at the bottom of the  page and then they had to have at least five important buildings.  We drew in pencil and then outlined in Sharpie marker.

On the second day, we finished the outlining and then put a red hand print on the road.  This later became firemen (idea straight from Pinterest here).  Students also started making emergency vehicle collages.  They were required to have at least 1-2 emergency vehicles on their road.  I showed students some collages that I found on Pinterest to give them a jumping off point.

On the fourth and last day, students finished up their collages and made their firemen!

6th Grade: Native American & Aboriginal Art

Argh!  Where is the school year going?  This is the last week of the 3rd quarter...that means 10 weeks left!  And, I have approximately 6 weeks until my art show!  Eek!

If you haven't already checked out my pages from my first two art shows (2011 and 2012), please do so!  Every year I try to do a theme, and this year's theme is nature.  Generally what I do is keep all of the projects that fit under that theme.  We take one day to sign the fronts of our artworks and glue them onto black construction paper for a frame (if they need it).  Then, I pick 1-2 pieces from each student's stack that are their best works to hang.

I always end up having trouble with one grade level having enough artworks to fit my theme...and this year it is 6th grade!  Plus, it's taking a lot longer to get through my units than I thought it would...so I think I'm going to have to combine my Native American unit and my Aboriginal unit into one "natives" unit.  I think it might actually be a smart idea to do this because then we can compare and contrast the indigenous cultures of western and eastern world.

I've got to rework my note packets and create one that has simple notes (or maybe not do notes at all for this unit??)  I plan on doing my Native American animal spirit linocut project (which will incorporate a self-portrait in the form of an animal and the incorporation of line as texture) and I want to do fixed sand paintings based on the Aboriginal culture and symbolism.  (I did a sand painting project with a Studio Art class when I did my student teaching.)  Here are some of the past projects...once we finish up the Greek unit (hopefully by the end of the week!) I'll keep you updated on my indigenous cultures unit!

Last years linocut project was not specifically the Native American animal spirit one...but it was similar.  For these particular prints, I had asked students to depict something from nature.  They had to try and show 2-3 different types of texture using line.  

The following sand paintings were done by a Studio Art class.  We used Masonite board that was primed with gesso and sanded.  They drew their design on with pencil and Sharpie.  Then, one color at a time, they painted on Elmer's glue and sifted the colored sand onto the glue.  When I did this at the time, my cooperating teacher didn't have sand.  I went to a local pet store and asked for a donation of fish tank sand.  I used powdered tempera to color the sand, which worked really well (but also stained hands like paint).  This year, however, I have TONS of pre-colored sand so this process will be much easier!

Jasper Johns Flags

Before Christmas break, one of the 2nd grade teachers asked me if I could do a silhouette project with her students in conjunction with President's Day and such.  I decided to turn this into a Jasper Johns unit to talk about the American flag and symbolism.  Part one of this unit is based off of a project I found on Pinterest.

We took a day to look at various Jasper Johns artwork in a power point, and then I asked students to create a drawing based on Jasper Johns art.

The next class, we talked about patriotism and the symbolism of the flag.  We also talked about how Jasper Johns always used interesting canvases for his artwork.  I passed out a packet of American songs and poems (the national anthem, the pledge, and America the Beautiful .  I had students cut these up and paste them onto some white tag board.  We talked about cutting them apart in creative ways to make the word placement interesting.

On the third day, we painted a blue square and red stripes (after reviewing the symbolism of those items), and I passed out white finger paint for the students to add the stripes.

For the second project in our unit, we are creating silhouettes of our heads and shoulders, painting the flag inside the silhouette, and then painting the background black, kind of for a reverse effect if you will.