Postcard Design
At the beginning of the year, third graders drew an image of themselves, using basic ovals and circles, in a place they have visited or wish to someday visit. Many kids drew themselves at the beach, since that's such a popular summer destination. These drawings were done with sharpie and colored pencil.
Van Gogh Starry Night Landscape
Vincent Van Gogh is endlessly fascinating to kids because of that bizarre ear incident, but his artwork is bursting with energy and life, even when no living things are in the image. Together, we talked about his painting, Starry Night, and created our own version with chalk, white paint, and construction paper. Kids took care to include a horizon line and add objects in the foreground and background.
Leaf Paintings
I collected a variety of leaves for students to draw as fall arrived. We focused on using our observational skills and including tiny details like veins and jagged edges. These have crayon outlines and watercolor, creating a watercolor resist.
Aztec Suns
These wonderfully whimsical suns were built with coil construction of red earthenware clay and underglazes. Additional textures were added with small wooden clay tools, but you can get the same effect with toothpicks. As inspiration, we examined the Sun stone, which is believed to be like an ancient calendar.
Sumi Paintings
Done in the style of Asian sumi, these delicate paintings were created with watercolor and traditional bamboo brushes.
Egyptian Sarcophagus
The Egypt unit is an exciting one for our third graders. They have lots of questions about the mummification process, and I used the sarcophagus of King Tut as an example. A fun way to introduce some of the archeological highlights is to read Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile, by Tomie de Paola. The project itself is paper mache, mounted on a sheet of tagboard, based on a scrunched newspaper and masking tape armature. Then, we painted the dried paper mache with gold tempera or acrylic. While the paint was drying, we touched on hieroglyphics and designed a cartouche in colored pencil. The next week, we added intricate symmetrical patterns, first in pencil, then with Sharpie markers.
Doodle for Google
Each year, Google holds a competition for kids to design a "doodle" that will be displayed on the front page of the Google website. All grades participate, and these are some examples by third graders.
Down the Back of the Chair
When I read Down The Back of the Chair by Margaret Mahy, I was so tickled that I had to try and use it in my art room! It's a hilarious poem about a family that discovers first simple, then peculiar, then plain insane things beneath the cushions of an innocuous chair. Third graders designed their own chairs with corrugated cardboard, construction paper crayons, and Sharpies. Can you tell I love Sharpies? The chair cushion is a little hinged book, and on each page is a small drawing of something "from down the back of the chair." The students chose some logical items such as keys, coins, or paper clips, and some wacky things like fairies, pirates, and rainbows.
Squiggle Drawing
This was just a sub activity, but the result was so lovely! All you need to do to make one is draw a controlled scribble, and begin coloring in all the shapes you discover as the lines intersect. We used marker, but this could easily be done with any coloring media.
Sonobe Ball
I didn't teach this, but one amazing kid did it entirely on his own. I put it in an art show because I was so impressed! There's no glue, only modular origami. This example is called Sonobe, and I can say from personal experience that it's very challenging!
Can I come join your 3rd grade class? What fun!
ReplyDelete