Pinch Pot Animals
Inspirational Quotes
Pop Art Food
One of my fifth grade classes is taught at a different building that was not presenting The Lion King musical so I decided to go a different route with them when it came to collaging. Students learned about Wayne Thiebaud’s pop art food paintings. However, instead of painting popular food items we used magazine to fill in the color. We made large scale food to entice those walking the hall way to stop and look a while.
Value Scale Celebrities
5th graders learned how to create a 5 point value scale to demonstrate how a pencil can create 5 shades of gray on the first day of the project. During this class period a list was sent around for students to write down a celebrity that they would like to recreate using the value scale the following week. Day two students learned how to create a carbon copy of half of their celebrities face. The third day was practicing filling in the five different values in the celebrities face in order to make it look realistic.
Collaged Birds of Africa
In anticipation for the Lion King kids musical each grade focused on a particular type of African animal. There were a total of 6 different bird to choose from and students used the technique of collaging with magazines to recreate the birds color and anatomy. This is an excellent exercise for practicing color matching and pay attention to color in our environment.
Optical Illusion Hearts
Optical illusions can range from realistic drawn images to simple shapes appearing to pop out into space. With the month of February being a month of love we focused on making hearts that pop. Students practiced creating a shadow to give their hearts a lift.
Color Wheel Eye
Fifth grade is going over which colors are primary or secondary on the color wheel! Go ahead ask them which is which. Before starting the eye students worked on a practice worksheet to mix and fill in a basic color wheel. From there they applied the same concept, but larger, onto a circle. The last day was spent drawing the parts of the eye and gluing the color wheel in place.
Winter Festive Lights
Continuing on in the festive art theme for December students learned how to use oil pastels to create value. Value being the range of lightness to darkness one can get out of a single color. Using this concept students create multi colored lights using a smudging technique to create light values (a.k.a the glow of the bulb).
3-D Snowflakes
To get into the festive winter holiday spirit Fifth grade students helped create 3-D snowflakes to decorate the cafeteria and the classroom. The first day was the hardest part getting down the first few steps of the snowflake. By day two students were able to independently repeat the pattern six times to create the larger than life snowflake. Some were able to make a second one to take home right away.
Day of the Dead Masks
Students studied the Mexican holiday known as “Dia de los muertos” (Day of the Dead) along side the well known American Halloween. Both holidays share several similarities: being celebrated around the same time, focusing on the supernatural aspects of cultures as well as dressing up in costume. The major difference is that Day of the Dead focuses on honoring passed away loved ones while Halloween focuses on pacifying spirits to stay out of ones house. Looking at the sugar skull and marigold motif students created their own 3-D sugar skull masks.
Graffiti Name Art
Fifth grade was introduced to the history of graffiti art and how it rebelled against the popular notion of who was considered an artist. Using visual thinking strategies each class analyzed the Lion graffiti mural seen off the I-75 freeway before starting. Students first practiced bubble lettering. Next, they applied a shading technique onto each letter of their name.
