A few more birds and some characters from our colonial past.

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! 

Preparing to print!

At last! Every child has their printmaking plate ready to go. There is no swimming lessons, or sport's events or any other excursions - that I know of!  (There's NAPLAN but fortunately not too many class changes as a result!)

 

 First we explored taking a line for a walk (Paul Klee style) then made up 'rules' for taking our lines for a walk creating patterns  that were then used to create designs for printmaking. You can see in Megs visual diary the process we have been through to develop our printmaking plates.

But now I have to go to a meeting to address some changes that need to happen in our school! Fortunately for me the Emily, the lovely lady stepping in to take my class on Monday is also a friend and was able to pop into the Art studio today (Saturday) and I could give her a quick printmaking tutorial - to give her some tips and clearly show her what we are working on. Thanks Emily!

At the same time I did a few colour tests for the children to see how the colours they have chosen will go together. 

I also made up two examples so they could see that their work could be repeated by simply sliding their design ...

OR by rotating the design.

Same printmaking plate - two very different designs.

These pieces of fabric will be decorated using embroidery stitches then transformed into anything the children want to make. I have said I want to see them print on fabric and use threads to decorate the surface of their work other than that it is up to them. Some children will be making pencil cases - if they are new to the school or have lost the ones they have made last year. Others will be making drawstring bags or cushions. One boy suggested coasters to go under hot drinks on the table, another has bought in a T-shirt so he can stitch his finished piece to the front of that.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they all come up with!

Perfect fit.

Our school choir will be attending the massed school choir event later this year. One of the songs relates in some way to M.C.Escher (I'm not sure how but I can't wait to see!) Anyway our music specialist asked if I would introduce Escher to the children. So we have interrupted our normal programme to have a quick look at the beautiful intriguing work of Escher.

I have been showing the classes this video - it's not too long but really demonstrates what Escher was all about and how his work links to mathematics.

Although we have taken a bit of a detour by introducing another artist in the middle of a project it actually works really well, a perfect fit in our current programme. Most classes will be almost ready to start their printmaking project, which will be a simple tessellation of a square tile decorated with lines from our investigation of Paul Klee's work .

Printmaking can be a bit of a messy nightmare in a classroom studio with 28 to 32 kids in a class. SO I have come up with a system that uses printmaking stations and allows kids to focus carefully on the printmaking process without other children around them pressuring them for their turn or making a mess of the printmaking area.I majored in printmaking at uni and am the daughter of an artist who also did a lot af printmaking so I can be a bit fussy with how the printmaking is done! I've seen some teachers just let the kids 'go for it' but I'd rather they learn the process well and the importance of keeping the area clean etc.)

I set up printmaking stations and children go to these to print ( containing the mess to a couple of areas ) I have created a set of numbered cards, each child gets one and this tells them which printmaking station they will go to- red green or blue and the order in which they will go. Once a child has finished printmaking they return their card to me an I call out the next number ; green 4 your turn - a bit like waiting in line at the licensing place or medicare!

While children are waiting for their turn to print they go on with another activity. Sometimes this might be a written component reflecting on their own work so far or responding to an art work by an artist related to the topic we are covering. This time they will be creating their own 'Escheresque' tessellations.

Most children have been creating simple square tessellations where a segment is cut from one side of the square and slid across to the opposite side and taped in place to create a template. Here is video tutorial if you'd like to give it a go at home!

One year 7 boy who was intrigued by the tessellations and wanted to try something a little more challenging so we did a quick search and found this video tutorial on how to create rotational tessellations. It is a step by step how to for a computer and we were trying to do it without the programme using our ruler, pencil and a piece of card. So he and I worked together to try and figure it out - it was a bit tricky and he tried hard to make it work and is going to keep trying at home. It was quite challenging. (I'm glad to say I did manage to figure it out. ) I've included the video just in case you want to challenge yourself and have a go - maybe you have the programme it refers to!

PS.

Today at recess the boy I mentioned and his friend came to show me that they had figured out the rotating tessellation. 

Well done Alex and Amir!

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.