Monsters!

We love monsters in the art room.  Monsters, aliens, robots... they are all great jumpstarts for inventing imaginative creatures.  Kindergarteners recently used their imaginations to create monster collages!

Kindergartners pretended they were monsters with the fun book, "If You're a Monster and You Know It," by Rebecca and Ed Emberley.

Students began working by sketching their ideas and then had the challenge of creating them with paper collage.   They added embellishments with yarn, shiny paper, and construction paper crayons.  We completed these works by gluing them to the backgrounds we made with primary colors.

Color in Kindergarten

Primary Color Playgrounds

Kindergarteners began their investigation of color with the primary colors and created primary color playgrounds.  What would your dream playground look like?  Some were water parks, others had the fastest slides in the world, and there were many swings and monkey bars.

We enjoyed dancing along to OK GO's super cool stop motion video to help us remember the colors.

We also read the book, Mouse Paint and used this as some inspiration for some paint play.  Students found those invisible mice that live in the art room, put them on skateboards, cars, and trucks, and painted with them.


We will be using these as backgrounds for our next project- coming soon!

Surrealism

This year, students are working on projects that relate to a big idea.  The final year of elementary school is a big one, especially when you've been in the same building for 7 years.  We are embracing this year of transformation in 6th grade and making that our big idea.

Transformation.  How do dreams transform reality?  How are dreams similar to and different from reality?  6th graders are exploring dreams and reality with Surrealism.  Surrealism is a period of art history in which artists tried to access the creativity of the unconscious mind.  Artists including Rene Magritte, Kay Sage, Hannah Höch, and Salvador Dali created many works that blurred the line between dreams and reality.

"usually, dreams are from your lives"

"Dreams look like real life but with weird or unusual things happening.
Sometimes people you know are in the dream."

The first game students played was the surrealist game, exquisite corpse, in which a creature is drawn collaboratively.  This went so fast I forgot to get photos!   It's a great game to play with the family, look it up or ask them about it!

Students then investigated the Surrealist technique of "seeing into" or "Paranoiac Critical Method" if you want to be fancy.  This exercise was coined by Salvador Dali and is all about looking at things in a new way.  Have you ever seen a bunny in the clouds?  Or a shape in a stain?  You've used this method!  6th graders began by staining a paper with tea, then used materials of their choosing to find images in the stains.


                                       ^Two students joining their papers together to make a map.


Students delved next into the surrealist technique of collage.  We looked at many examples, including work by Hannah Höch.  

Students began with a magazine background and had the challenge of adding new images to change the meaning.  I'd say they succeeded!

This studnet's work takes place
underwater.

Spaceships

Every year, students look forward to creating collaborative spaceships in 5th grade.  This year, students choose their groups, brainstormed the theme, source of power, and design, and created a 3D sculpture.  Students thought like artists, persisting through failure, experimenting, playing, and collaborating.  On the last day, students presented their creations to the class.  I am always amazed with the problem solving, imagination, and team work that goes into these ships!

Working on the ships:

Problem solving- supports for the wings

Reflective satellite 

The flaps wouldn't stay closed so this group designed a new
latch system using caps and yarn.

Making a salt water base for their ship.

"Look, we discovered a new technique!" Students representing fire with marker and tinfoil.

making a control panel

Reflections: