Our Legacy Projects

Each year, our sixth graders create a Legacy Project to leave behind for our school. The first year I introduced this, we worked pretty small, framed it without much pomp and circumstance, and hung it quietly in the hallway. It's beautiful, but I underestimated how powerful a project could be if over fifty students worked on it at one time. We used Kandinsky's painting as our inspiration and now this piece rotates between the hallway and the Art Room (depending on the empty spots in our Hallway Gallery.) 

Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Circles - 63 small canvases

The second year, our school was undergoing a large renovation and I stumbled upon the very fitting quote "Without change, there would be no butterflies." Each sixth grader received a butterfly shaped canvas and selection of acrylics in our school's new interior color scheme. Next thing to figure out was where we were going to put all those butterflies! There is a long, empty hallway that every student goes through to get to our music room and gym and it was just aching for some color and pizzazz  I adore these butterflies and am really pleased that the heavy-duty double-sided foam tape has held them up without any problems.

Without change, there would be no butterflies.

Last year, we jumped on the Bottle Cap Mural bandwagon. It was the first time all the kids worked on one piece together. Logistically, it was a little strange having over twenty kids work in one small space, but I saw beautiful teamwork. They had gone to school together for so many years that they knew each other's strengths and knew how to work really well together.

Celebrating the four seasons of Wisconsin weather ( using +2,000 bottle caps)

This year, I wanted to make the final result more random and not so teacher-planned (that's hard to admit for this control freak!) Each student rolled a set of two interactive dice on the SMARTBoard; one to choose a shape (circle, square, heart, sun, star or zigzag) and the other to choose a color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple). The combinations and options seemed endless and so were their imaginations! Each student then painted a 5" square with watercolor paints. They also applied what they knew about composition, emphasis, value and stippling (which they had used within previous projects.) The finished composition of all sixty squares is just stunning! And considering how "random" it was, it sure looks balanced and organized! Now, it will hang in our school's health room for all to enjoy! 

To see each piece up close, check out our Artsonia Gallery.

I've got some more ideas in my head for the next few years - the computer lab is a little lackluster and the hallway into the gym needs some fun, active colors! Hmmmmm……

~Amy