The first three albums have circus theme work: Circus bears were done by 1st
grades. The collars are big milk filters from Farm and Fleet painted with
liquid watercolors and glitter paint. The next session was skills practice
with cutting and gluing. The milk filter was folded in half and a small slit
cut in the center, then slipped on to a paint stick handle and glued. The
bear heads were glued on top of that.
The circus clown lesson was spliced from different ideas from artsednet
members (thanks again!) and other sources. 2nd grade classes began with
drawing the clown face and shoulders, clothing, hair, and accessories in
pencil, I think, on black construction paper, then painted the face with
white tempera (2 coats), and outlined all of the lines with glue. Next class
the features were drawn in black crayon and costumes, hair, and features
were colored with oil pastels. I made a poster with different ways the
features could be drawn. 3rd class was spent making the background - strips
of tissue paper glued down with starch, and confetti pieces of tissue glued
over that. The clowns were cut out and glued to the background with white
glue. (I can't quite remember, but I think we did those two steps
separately).
The circus train was done by kindergarten and 1st grades. I believe the
original lesson was in School Arts. The circus animals were drawn and
colored in crayon. In the next class students glued down strips for the
train car's bars; a wider strip was folded in half and cut in a pattern for
a symmetrical decorative top, and wheels were cut out and glued on. Glue
line and glitter decorations were added at a station before the drying rack.
This past November 1st and 2nd grades made Dias de los Muertos "bobble-head"
calavera figures out of air-dry clay. The first day they received a wedge of
clay from which they modeled a body, head and hands, and 3 wires. We wound
the wire (the thinner wire for the hands is from Sax, the thicker wire is
plastic-coated wire in a heavier gauge from Home Depot) around pencils,
stuck one end in the body and the other in the head or hands. The next
session we painted them with tempera paint - (I used Jazz gloss because it
dried really quickly. While it was drying the students got their lace,
cloth, beads, etc., ready). They used tacky glue to glue on clothing, wraps,
and shawls of lace, fabric, and ribbons; model magic hats, hair, and
accessories, chenille stem lassoes were popular, as were small beads stuck
into eyes and model magic belts and such. In future I would do the painting
on a separate day and then add the other stuff in another class. I needed to
seal the paint and the clay and didn't really think about how difficult that
would be after all the other adornments! The papel picado they are displayed
with were done by 4th and 5th graders.
The last album are the Ndebele houses and dolls that kindergarten, 1st, and
2nd grades just finished making. We began by reading Maya Angelou's _My
Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me_. (Kindergarten had just finished
painting typical one and two-story US style houses based on the story _Oh,
Were They Ever Happy!_, so this was a great follow-up for that.) I had them
practice making the kinds of geometric designs that are typical for the
Ndebele designs... basic shapes followed by different ways of putting them
together to make different patterns, and then they painted the designs in
black tempera on long strips of railroad board (1 board cut into 4 strips, I
think 5.5 inches high). We used pan tempera paints to paint inside the
designs the next time we met. The pan tempera made a very vibrant kind of
watercolor that the black tempera lines resisted a little. Then they traced
a 12" round circle on yellow construction paper, cut it out, and painted a
straw-like texture from the center out with yellow and brown tempera paint.
All this took about 3 class periods. The 4th time we met I showed them some
Ndebele beadwork I had purchased (designs like those on the houses) and an
Ndebele doll. They cut out the doors in their houses, and cut a slit in the
roofs and stapled them to make a cone-shaped roof. I had parent help in the
kindergarten classes with stapling and such. The 1st and 2nd grade houses I
stapled together before class. We made little Ndebele dolls out of black
construction paper, beads, wire, and pigment/metallic markers. Prior to
class I made a template (a traced circle, and 3-4 smaller circles traced
inside) and copied it onto black construction paper. Cut in half to make one
doll. Students cut around the outside half circle, used the inner circles as
a guide for "beads" (dots made with markers), and stapled (with help), into
and ice-cream cone shape. I had painted wooden beads black prior to class
(dumped beads into a ziplock bag with black acrylic paint, then set out to
dry on waxed paper). We used a piece of wire through the holes of the bead,
a yellow bead or spiraled yellow wire to represent neck rings, and taped
that to the inside of the cone. Some made hair by taping together 3-4
strands of yarn and twisting that into the hole at the top of the bead. I
did find some other versions of Ndebele dolls online, but wanted something
we could finish in one day since we'd already spent so much time on this.
They look so fine all lined up on top of their lockers!
