Lesson 6: Paper Mache Houses

 For the sixth lesson I had students start out by drawing a warm up of what their dream house would be on paper.  I then started to give a basic explanation of what paper mache is and how we would be making a dream house structure using the paper mache technique. I continued by showing them some pictures of extremely unique houses to get them inspired and thinking about what kind of house they would make. I also told them that while thinking about what kind of house you wanted to make keep in mind how you will incorporate different shapes in your structure, which I think helped them to brainstorm how they will create the house. Afterwards I brought out all the supplies for creating the structures for the house, which was pieces of cardboard, some boxes, water bottles, tape, and paper. I showed them how they can create the bases for their house by taping together cardboard, shaping scrunched up paper, and using the water bottles to add more diverse shapes to their structures. I also did my best to explain to them that these structures don’t have to be perfect because we will be covering them with the paper mache technique but they still had a little bit of trouble understanding this. If I did this in the future I think I would try to show an example of creating these houses without taking up too much class time. I had trouble figuring out how to do this since my class does struggle when it comes to listening to directions because they get too antsy. I think maybe if I had a base already put together with all the techniques of taping together different materials and using scrunched up paper to create different shapes and then just explaining that part instead of demonstrating it and instead using the time to demonstrate the paper mache process of the project they would have understood better. However I do feel that overall this project did go pretty well! All of the kids really enjoyed it and they loved how hands on it was. If the kids had any misunderstanding with the project in the beginning they definitely caught on quick with me just walking around and helping them with their projects. Since this project was a bit more time consuming we will be continuing the paper mache portion of it next class and I think they are excited to get to finishing and decorating these projects!

Lesson 5: Surreal Animal Paintings

For the fifth lesson I had my students do paintings of animals that might be in their fantasy world based on the surrealism movement. First I started the class by demonstrating how to play the game Exquisite Corpse. I showed my students how they will each get a piece of paper folded in 3 parts and demonstrated how they should be drawing something crazy and made up. The students seemed to be really into the demonstration and were laughing a lot at the parts of the Exquisite Corpse I was drawing. After the demonstration I handed them each a piece of paper folded in 3 parts and timed them 2 minutes to draw their section before passing it on. A couple of kids struggled a bit because they missed some of the demonstration from arriving late but I just helped explain it more during the process. At the end of the activity the kids were really excited to open up their papers and see their creatures and it overall was a great warm up for the lesson. Afterwards I went into explaining what the surrealism art movement was and showed them work from Salvador Dali as well as several other artists. Then I went on to explain how we will be creating surreal paintings of made up animals for this class. I proceeded to pass around 3 cups of which each had strips of paper with the name of an animal on it. One cup contained animals that could fly, one cup contained exotic animals, and the last cup contained more domesticated animals. Each student grabbed 3 separate strips of paper (one strip of paper from each cup) this way kids would be ensured a very mixed variety of animals. Then after all the kids got their 3 animals assigned to them I handed them an image that I had printed out of each of the animals, so they could reference the images if they were struggling with drawing the animals. I then told them to look at their animals and pick out the most descriptive characteristic from each animal, for example, an elephant is most known for their trunks. I then handed each student paper, pencil and an eraser for them to draw their animals with and continued to demonstrated on my own paper how I would draw an elephant mixed with a pelican mixed with a mouse using my printed image of those animals and picking out distinguishable characteristics from each animal. While students were drawing I did have several come up to me saying that they finished quite early so I would go over to where they were sitting and specifically point out characteristics of their animals from the printed images I provided and told them to try to incorporate more of those details in their drawings. When the students were fully finished drawing out their image I had them trace over it with permanent marker and then provided them with watercolor paints to paint it. In the end I think the kids enjoyed this lesson the most from any of the others, which is good because it means I am definitely improving with the way I am teaching them! I think what made the most difference with this project was providing the kids with more direction on what I wanted them to draw. I also think having the images of animals printed out definitely helped them picture what they wanted to draw. In the end I learned a lot by how I taught this lesson and will definitely approach my other lessons using similar techniques.

Lesson 4: Button Painting Mosaics

For the fourth lesson I decided to teach my class about color values while using inspiration from mosaics. First I explained to all the students what value in color is and I showed them how to make different values of a color using black and white paint and mixing it with a color of their choice. Then I had all the kids draw a picture of a type of plant life or tree that they would have in their fantasy world. Afterwards I asked them each to choose 3 of their favorite colors they would like to incorporate into their painting and while they were drawing their plants I made them each a pallet of their three colors in the middle and black and white on each end. Then I told them to paint in their picture only using those three colors but mixing them with black and white to create different values of the colors. All of the students pretty much understood it except for one girl with whom I took time to explain it further personally. There was also one other girl who didn't really find the lesson interesting and became restless and painted her whole paper black but I left it by telling her if that's what she's happy with then that's fine, and hoping that she at least took something away from the lesson. The only other child I had a problem with was another girl who later on in the lesson decided she didn't like her painting, so I tried to help her alter it to make it something that she liked but she refused to want anything to do with it so I let her start another one but she didn't finish it at that point because it was so late in the class. This class went by pretty fast and although we didn't get to finish the lesson I think a lot of kids enjoyed it and it kept them interested and occupied nearly the whole time. The second part of this lesson will be for students to pick out buttons and other small objects that are multiple hues and values of the three colors in their paintings and glue them over their paintings in the correct color spaces to make them into mosaics and hopefully we will have time for that in the next lesson. In the end I think this project was very successful in engaging the students in art while incorporating learning.

Lesson 3: Fantasy World Dioramas

For the third lesson in this class I had the students make dioramas of their fantasy world. I started out the lesson by explaining what a diorama was and the materials I had available for them to use. I then showed the students some diorama work from as artist Tanaka Tatsuya, who makes diorama’s using everyday materials along with little sculptural pieces. After seeing everything the students were eager to get started so I handed them all pieces of air dry clay along with paint and told them they could grab ay extra material they wanted from the stuff I had available at the front of the table. Some students started out by sculpting the clay and others ran up to the front of the table and started grabbing the different fabric I had available for them to use. The rest of the class period was spent with all the students creating their own little pieces and backgrounds for their diorama and I was constantly walking around helping them cut materials, glue pieces on, create little structures, and just overall helping them think up ne ideas for things to build in their dioramas. The students really seemed to enjoy this project and the activity pretty much went to the end of the class. There was one student who finished early but I helped her to make a house for her diorama until the end of class. All in all I think this lesson was very successful and my students loved it! The one thing I think might make this lesson difficult to teach is if there were more kids in the class because I was constantly having to help the students with cutting, gluing, and building things. However for my sized class (5 students today) it was perfect and it’s definitely a project I would do again!

Lesson 2: Fantasy World Worksheet and Watercolor Techniques

For the second lesson of this class I decided to create a type of worksheet that would help the students understand the concept of a fantasy world better to go along with the art lesson that I had. So in the beginning of class I handed out the worksheets that gave examples fantasy worlds such as: Candy Land, Outer Space, Under Water, etc. and prompted them to either pick one of the examples or create one themselves. The questions following this were all related to specific details of their fantasy world such as “draw a picture of the people or creatures in your fantasy world”, “draw the type of trees and plants you would have in your fantasy world”, “draw the types of buildings and homes you would have in your fantasy world”, etc. When I was watching the students fill out the worksheet it was still obvious that the younger students were struggling with it and so I would read them each question and give them examples, which did help but their attention span seemed to be very short even though we only worked on the worksheet for about 15-20 minutes of class time. Once the older students had finished their worksheets I told the rest of the class to wrap up on whatever question they were on and we could continue working on it later. Afterwards I moved onto the actual art lesson, which was showing the students different watercolor techniques. I gave a demonstration of how you can use salt, oil pastels, crayons, colored pencils, chalk pastels, and plastic wrap to create different effects when using watercolors. I then told the students that I wanted them to paint an image of what the sky in their fantasy world would look like and encouraged them to be creative and take advantage of the different techniques. As I was walking around the students seemed to be having a lot of fun using all the different techniques, and I noticed that if one student started using a certain tool then they all then wanted to try it. Therefore the salt was really popular throughout the whole class and several students experimented more with the oil and chalk pastels, however towards the end more students wanted to try the plastic wrap. All in all I think the students really did enjoy learning this technique, however they did finish a bit earlier than I had expected. For the ones that finished early I encouraged them to create more detail in their piece and that did work for some. About 15 minutes before class ended all the students had pretty much finished their paintings and they insisted they didn’t want to embellish on it anymore. After this I tried to get some of the students who didn’t finish working on their worksheet to finish it but they were all becoming very antsy and were not able to focus. I think the main issue I am having with getting the younger students to listen to me is that they are all very close friends and when one of them decides to rebel the rest follow. Therefore for my next class I am going to come up with more collaborative art games, such as exquisite corpse, and alter my lessons to make them more collaborative so that the students will be able to play with one another more during class. My final thoughts after this lesson was that I still have a lot to learn about teaching art to younger students, however my class is doing a great job at helping learn how to teach them better and I definitely saw an improvement since last time!