Fifth Grade Mandalas

"Mandala"comes from the Sanskrit word for "circle"

Mandalas appear all over the world, in various forms.  The mandala commonly represents unity, the circle of life or the universe.
Mandalas use Radial Balance, meaning everything comes from a center point, a circle with a center.  Think of spider webs, flowers, snowflakes; these are all examples of radial balance.

Students start with a circle. 

Divide the circle into equal sections.

        Add a repeating design. 

       And finally add color!

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Some students chose to work with a theme too:

Peace

Halloween

Cow

This is one of my favorite lessons to teach each year.  Even though it is a basic idea - radial balance, line and color - students always create such a great variety!  

- Miss Tomaso

First Grade Rainbow Fish

1st  Grade read "Rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister as inspiration.(http://www.amazon.com/The-Rainbow-Fish-Marcus-Pfister/dp/1558580093/ref=wp_bs_1_B00CKC8PM6_hardcover)

Our fish have rainbow bodies.  The colors are in the order of the rainbow - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet.

 

We talked about emphasis - giving something importance by making it the biggest, by putting it in front or using contrast.  

Our fish are the biggest object on the paper, contrast against the blue and are placed in front of the bubbles.

 Students used shapes to make their fish.  We also painted circles on the blue paper for a background.

After drawing our fish, we cut them out and put them on the background.

Some of our fish have extras - fish friends, starfish, seaweed, even a shark and octopus!

A colorful school of fish from the 1st Grade!

Third Grade Longhorns

Students were introduced to public art with this project!

We looked at the Cow Parade (http://www.cowparade.com/) and J. Doe (http://steveadamsomaha.tripod.com/P_JdoeOmaha/Home.html) public art projects.  I was very lucky to be living in Omaha during both J. Doe projects!  Recently Omaha hosted the "Play Me, I'm Yours" (http://streetpianos.com/omaha2013/) street piano project as well.   

Each of these projects were completed by individual artists with a common theme.  The finished artwork had a wide variety of styles, but by using a similar model (cow, mannequin, piano) they were tied together as a cross-city project.  

Because we are the Longhorns, we naturally had to do a longhorn cow for our model!  :)

Each student was given a blank longhorn drawing to complete their project.  They chose the theme and how their finished project looks.  Each cow has it's own theme, complete with title, chosen by the very creative Third Grade artists.

Just a few of the results:

"The Fair Longhorn"          Carleigh

"Star Longhorn"          Ella

"Tormentor"          Colby B.

"Smiley Longhorn"          Madelynn H.

"Bolo Fred"          Carter L.

"Colorful Rainbow"          Ashley F.

"The Spotted Cow"          Raissa

"Fiesta Cow"          Annika M.

"Storm Cow"          Ali M.

"Orange Zebra Cow"          Kiersten

"The Strong Longhorn Mathy"          Bryn M.

"RGBL"          Alejandra

Seventh Grade Batik

The Seventh Grade class moves faster than the other grades because of the schedule.  We get to meet every day but only for a quarter.  That means packing a lot of art into a very short time.  Even though this limits some of the things we can do there are still plenty of options to explore.  I also have the added bonus of students who are excited to be in class trying new things.

The latest example of our crazy art experiments:  crayon batik!

Teaching batik would normally require fabric, hot wax and dyes.  Although I would love to give students that experience, we have to improvise.  Instead we use crayons and ink.  

The crayons act as a barrier, resisting the ink.  Seventh Grade students were given a choice of creating a realistic or abstract piece.  We then covered their creations in black ink, wiping off the excess.  The results are below.

Orrin

Allison

Braden

Taylor

Allison

Adriana

Cole

Adelaide

The great thing about this lesson is that it can be modified.  The work can be complex or simple.  The project is easy to complete no matter the skill level.

Our special needs students can create a masterpiece too!

Samantha