Upcycled paper mâché project

Finally after athletics, fun runs, and a short period of leave for me the kids are completing their paper mâché figures. Each class had a theme that matched with their classroom learning in English, science or history.

Some classes did animals and birds...

some made aliens...

others have made figures from our colonial past.

By next week most kids should be finished! I'll post more photos then!

history links

A couple of classes are looking at early settlement times in Australia. 

To link in with their classroom theme I modified the paper mâché project I'd planned for these two yr 3/4 classrooms. Rather than make animals we have opted to create some characters that may have been around in early colonial times. 

We researched some images of paintings and early photos of those times and made notes in our visual diaries using sketches and some phrases or adjectives.

Today we used bottles, card, pipe cleaners and newspaper to create armatures (frames) for our sculptures that will be covered with paper mâché next week.

Some are making bushrangers, others swagmen a couple are making soldiers and there are quite a few ladies with bonnets and parasols! 

Klee Cityscape

With this project we started by looking at some of Paul Klee's cityscape paintings, with a particular focus those using geometric shapes. we developed our ideas in our visual diaries and made collage cityscapes using colourful paper. You can see these here if you would like to check back.

This term we are developing this theme further by using some geometric stamp shapes I made with a pile of cheap erasers bought from a 'bargain basement $2 shop' (it was even more of a bargain because a pack of 8 cost $1!!!)

I started by demonstrating to the children how to print with the stamps. As they had had some practise making buildings using 2D regular maths  shapes and had created their collage using regular geometric shapes most of them had a very clear idea of what to do.

 

The children then printed onto strips of felt using fabric ink, leaving the washed stamps looking like this! D:

They are now using the short pieces of felt as a sampler to practise stitches on before moving on to embellish their long strip of fabric.


The long pieces once decorated will be folded as shown in the photo to become the pencil case to store their art room equipment in. These should easily last them till the end of  primary school. 

 

*** Here's a tip for anyone trying this at home.
I tried putting the ink under a sponge to make a stamp pad, it did not work very well with the fabric ink and felt. The best way was to give the kids a plate with a spoonful of ink and a paintbrush. They painted the ink onto the 'stamp' and pressed it onto the fabric. This gave a much better result.

Building on our experiments.

On my most recent trip to Europe I spent a week in London and whilst there I visited the TATE Modern. An afternoon strolling around the Paul Klee exhibition inspired some ideas for lessons this term.

All classes from year three to seven have been focusing on the art work of Paul Klee. my last post showed how we experimented with lines and mark making. The children in year 4-7 have been working on projects based around "taking their line for a walk" (Paul Klee is renowned for saying a line is a dot that went for a walk and drawing is taking a line for a walk.)

The year threes however have looked at a different style of work by Paul Klee where colour and shape is the focus.

 They started by discussing the painting to identify the types of shapes they could see. This was a great opportunity to link maths and art using the terms to describe the geometric shapes or regular shapes that Klee uses in his art works of this type. We compared them to organic or irregular shapes and recorded this information in their visual diaries.

Then came time to play with some 2D maths shapes to construct and record as many different building shapes usiing the simple squares, rectangles and triangles.

 These ideas were then used to create a colourful collage of buildings on a coloured ground.

They finished by making a quick two sentence reflection on their work in their visual diaries. 

 I like how I ...

But I think it would have been even better if I ....

Trust the Process.

The art studio is not all about a final product. The creative process is very important. Often our lessons will involve discussing the work of others (peers, well known or less known artists from different times or different cultures) from these discussions we develop ideas and practise skills before producing an art work. 

Last week has had a big focus on the creative process - playing with mark making tools, exploring what they can do. There was absolutely no expectation to make anything, except interesting marks on paper. Almost every child from year 4-7 loved this activity.

 

 We recorded what we did in our visual diaries, recreating some of the lines and marks we liked most.

Then came the imagination challenge. The children were asked to spend some time looking into all the scribbly marks on the large sheets in front of them to find hidden creatures or plants. There were also recorded into their visual diaries and developed into drawings that showed others more clearly what was in their imagination.

 These ideas will be further developed for use in different printmaking and painting activities inspired also by the work of Paul Klee. Different year levels and different classes will be working on slightly different projects although our starting point is the same.

Happy New Chinese Year!

In this year of celebrations and in making links with the new Australian History curriculum last week we did activities using Chinese New Year as a focus. We discussed what types of things people did to celebrate this event and then why it is we know about Chinese New Year here in Australia. This lead to a bit of a discussion about immigration at different levels from year one upwards!

Yr 1 & some yr 2 classes made Paper chain dragons.

 

The Yr 3 classes made Folded paper spring dragons.

These 'puppets' were so much fun to play with! And obviously pretty special!

 

(PS: One older sister told me that her brother slept with his dragon on his bed! Cute!)

Those kids in mixed year 2/3 classes had the choice of either type of dragon- most chose to go with the paper chain one. I think it was because the paper chain ones could be made really long and this became a great game of measuring the length of their dragons to see who had managed to make the longest one with their two coloured paper squares. Maths meets art!

The year fours used line to create drawings of Chinese dragons. They had to include lines that showed movement and create patterns with lines rather than colouring in areas of their drawing.

looking and seeing...

Every now and then I do a structured lesson where I direct the children with their drawing. Today I used Mona Brookes's book "Drawing with Children". In this book Mona breaks everything you draw into 5 basic elements. Circles (empty closed round shapes), dots (coloured round closed shapes) straight lines, curved lines and angled lines. To start the lesson we all looked at an object and considered what lines and shapes we would need to create a drawing of the object- surprisingly we ended up with the same kind of things that Mona would have suggested! ;)

From there we followed step by step instructions to draw a lion. We talked about how even though we would all be following the same instructions our final products might be quite different.

We also talked about how it is ok to make a mistake and this is not wrong but an opportunity to be a bit more creative to solve the problem of making a line that is not quite the way we want it to work for us in our art work.

Once the kids finished following my instructions they went on a "studio walk" to have a look at everyone else's work and see how they interpreted the instructions and solved any problems they had.

After the studio walk we thought about places we may find a lion and the kids were then able to create the rest of their art work from their own imaginations adding any other details they might need to make their drawings work.

They were given the freedom to select from a number of choices when it came to adding colour. So although we started with a lesson that was highly structured  listen and follow instructions it ended allowing children to explore ideas and medium independently in an unstructured way.