I forgot one?!

2014-2015 CD Weavings - 6th grade Legacy Project

I LOVE our Legacy Project tradition and was shocked to realize that I totally forgot to tell you about the one we did two years ago! It is hanging in our computer lab, is about 5' tall by 7' wide, and is made out of recycled CDs and some of the craziest yarn I've ever purchased!

The 6th graders warped the CDs with thin yarn, cut out and made needles out of plastic lids, and then proceeded to weave "over-under-over-under" with yarn in all sorts of cool colors and assortment of textures. I don't have any pics from during the process because it was so long ago, but there is a great tutorial here.  Enjoy the pictures!

And truth be told, I totally complained about all the cutting and glueing for the broken CD border, but I just love it! Makes for such a great contrast for the soft, fuzzy yarn on round CDs to have these shiny, jagged pieces framing the entire project.

Another Legacy Project Unveiled

This is our 7th year doing a 6th grade Legacy Project - which I describe to the kids as a "gift of personal property, handed down from the past to the future."

Finished mural - almost 8' wide!

This year, we made faux-repousse tiles with 7" cardboard squares, yarn, spray adhesive, aluminum foil and oodles of colored Sharpies. (You can find an excellent tutorial at A Faithful Attempt.) Our theme was "Wisconsin Nature" and  while we have some repeated images (four foxes, six birds, etc...), all SIXTY-ONE students took their idea and put their unique personality into it - I could not be more proud of them!

Avery's Butterfly

Brady's Leaf

Coleman's Fox

Peyton's Ladybug

Sofia's Campfire

And while this is the absolute largest Legacy Project at almost 8' long, next year we will have to go a bit smaller because our main office has made a request and their space is the smallest we will ever tackle. Good thing I'm always up for a challenge!

~Amy

Don't Judge a Box By Its Cover

According to our district curriculum, our sixth graders should be "exposed to researching an artist, an art style or art movement". Since I don't want to GRADE traditional research papers, I don't have them WRITE them! For the last few years, we've done these art history boxes and I've been very happy with the results.

First, we start off with a PowerPoint into to the -isms of art history: Realism, Impressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, etc. It's a lot of me talking and them taking notes and I don't usually like "lecturing" to my classes, but I find for this kind of content, it's necessary. It's fun to see them recognize a lot of what we talk about because of all their years of Artist the Week presentations. They know more than they think they know!

Then, they choose a book from my Art Library. I really like the Mike Venezia series, Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists. At last count, I had over 40 different titles, so the kids have quite a few to pick from. I also let them use the Know the Artist posters. I order most of my art supplies and these kinds of books and posters from United Art & Education, but they are readily available in all sorts of catalogs.

Once they have chosen their artist, they get to work finding out basic biographical information: full name, birth year, death year, place of birth, style of art. And then through their research, they have to find at least a few interesting facts to include in their final write-up.

They also make a colored pencil reproduction of one of their artist's pieces of art. I really try to have them focus on the accuracy of the composition and recreating the colors and texture in the piece. When 6th graders look at famous works of art, they don't fully appreciate the work that goes into it, but when they have to recreate it, I find they have a better understanding of what the original artist had to go through to make the piece great. 

The last step is painting the cardboard box (which is called a "White Craft Box" and is about 4 1/2"x 4 3/4") with acrylics, using ModPodge to attach the recreation to the outside lid and the gluing the typed facts to the inside off the box. 

At the end of it all, my students have a piece of functional sculpture, a detailed colored pencil drawing, and a deeper knowledge base and appreciation of art history. They have also incorporated reading, writing, research, and technology. This project gives me a lot of bang for my buck and is one of my favorite lesson plans - I hope you give it a try!

~ Amy

Digital Learning Day 2014

A few years back, I earned an iPad through our Artsonia funds. While one iPad isn't ideal for an entire school, or even an entire class, we seem to be making it work. So, in honor of Digital Learning Day on February 5, here are some examples of our digital learning:

I'm always looking for other ways to use our iPad, so leave a suggestion in the comments!  Thanks!

~Amy

Look what they left behind!

I started a tradition with our 6th graders a while back that we call a "Legacy Project." This year, after a request from our awesome phy.ed. teacher, the sixth graders worked on creating a mural in our gym that showed the five components of physical fitness: flexibility, muscular endurance, muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance and body composition. We also added "sportsmanship" because we felt it was an important element of physical education.

The process of painting in the gym

The Process:

Each table formed a "team" and worked together to define their term, brainstorm a list of possible activities to show the term and used a template to plan out the body shapes. 

Then, we projected their drawings onto the gym walls and traced them with pencil. Using the leftover wall paint colors from when our school was renovated, we filled in each figure with solid colors.

The Product:

When it was all finished, we photographed the final figures and put them in the WordFoto app so others could easily see what each figure represented.

The Legacy Project is something that our 6th graders really seem to enjoy. And when we talk about the process afterwards, I'm always surprised by the conversations. I asked the kids how they felt about working on something for about a month, but not having anything to "take home and hang on the fridge." They were so cool about it - they said they may not have anything to take home, but their art will be in our school for years and hundreds of kids will see it! There's a LOT of planning and prep work to make a process like this go smoothly, but that kind of reaction is why I'll continue this tradition!

~Amy

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