6th Choice- 3D Works

This is the 5th post about my 6th graders' choice art projects to end the year. You can read the first explanatory post here. These are the miscellaneous 3D projects. Clay was not an option for my students since I can only afford enough clay for each student to do one ceramic project a year. Art Straws, cardboard, and papier-mâché were used instead. 

If this little sculpture could've stood on its own, I would have loved to show you more than one angle. While the student did some things the hard way- like making each appendage out of a separate Art Straw instead of bending one in half to form the legs- it was a pretty big step for him. When it came time to make the shield, I saw a lot of collaboration. The artist had made the front of the shield but was struggling to figure out how to make his warrior hold it. I was about to fall into old habits and jump right in with a suggestion, when the students he was sitting with beat me to it. Even a couple of students with, shall we say, low motivation were eager to help him solve the problem. I think he ended up making a handle and sliding the arm through it.

This student had to change her first plan for adding the figures after they were too flimsy. I don't think she was totally satisfied with her Art Straw stick figures but we were out of time! I also think the "go green" message was an impulse as it was scrawled in sharpie about a minute before clean up.

This student's plan had to change due to time management! He had a really cool forest built out of Art Straws in the first class period. He started painting the Art Straws in the second but made the poor choice of cleaning up early before he was finished painting his trees in the second class period. By the time I caught him, it was almost time for everyone to clean up! In the third class, he finished painting the trees. The problem with painting Art Straws is that they get kinda flimsy and floppy. He actually tried to tell me he was done with an unpainted base and falling over trees. We talked for a couple minutes and I commented that the trees looked like they were blowing over in a storm. I was happy with his solution of turning it into a hurricane-ish scene by painting the base and adding debris.

Several students asked me if they could use papier-mâché... I told them that they could, but it would take a lot of outside work. I set up the timeline that the 3rd class had to be reserved for painting so the first had to be constructing the base and the 2nd had to be for papier-mâché. One pair of students wanted to make a Gollum head (Lord of the Rings) and it was looking great but the never finished it. A few others wanted to make balls- a volleyball, a softball, and a couple basketballs. I told them it would be hard, and though it was, they did a pretty decent job for their first try. I think if they work with papier-mâché in the future, the students will be able to pack the newspaper tighter. I tried to rotate the wet forms as they dried but only being at the school 2 days a week it didn't really work out. The balls ended up with a flat side. I guess the good part is they won't roll away while displayed. :)

This student tried "cheater" papier-mâché. One of the other elementary art teachers in my district tried covering newspaper forms with a thick layer of mod podge instead of using a traditional papier-mâché technique. It worked pretty well! I think it was especially effective on the solar system project so that the student didn't have to cover the whole black base board. The student sprayed tempera paint to make the look of a stars and it looked really good. Then he gave into one of those impulses and added the orange brush strokes all over the background at the last minute. I think those impulses are part of artistic development. I remember even in high school having a friend in art class just tell me to stop when I was tempted to take a project too far!

This student wanted to make an owl from the beginning but her idea kept evolving. She ended up building the base structure at home and bringing it back to class to finish. I told her I liked the limited color palette, though I wish the trees in the background had more definition, and maybe something to tie them in with the tree the owl is perched on.

I wasn't really sure where this student was heading when he was painting circles and gluing them to the cardboard frame, but I thought it was a fun way to reference a crowd when he was finished.

This student had a lot of fun. She used air dry clay she had at home to make her dog and brought it in the 3rd class period to add to her base. She asked if we had tissue paper to make the foliage and I found some in the closet. She asked if she could go outside to look for sand to add to her path, but I saved her the trouble and brought some play sand over from my other school. The only thing she didn't finish was a butterfly she intended to add on the thin piece of reed sticking up from the center of her base.

6th Choice- Sports

This is the 4th post about my 6th graders' choice art projects to end the year. You can read the first explanatory post here. This is the post all about sports! All it took was one student asking to make a cardboard version of her competitive softball team's logo and several other students in her class fed off of that idea.

 The first "sports" student spent time getting the plan drawn out, painted, and carefully cut out. Unfortunately, some of the projects never went beyond sloppy paintings. With more time, I would have encouraged the two students whose work is pictured below to paint the background and clean up the logos.

Beyond baseball and softball, I seem to have a lot of students in soccer leagues. This is different for me since I grew up in a small town and didn't really know anyone who played soccer outside of the occasional game in PE. I thought my two soccer drawing students did a nice job on their projects.

I was glad that this student added dimension to the words in his drawing and replaced the "o"s with soccer balls.

This student followed a tutorial I printed off last year for the Sports Spheres project to draw the correct shapes in her soccer ball. I like the perspective she used in her drawing.

6th Choice- 2D Work

This is the 3rd post about my 6th grade students' choice art projects at the end of the school year. You can read the first explanatory post here. The two dimensional artwork probably had the most obvious variety, though I can still see trends. I've noticed that a lot of my 6th graders are into fantasy! I also noticed that not many students chose painting, unless it was painting on cardboard. You'll see many examples of that in my next post with the "sports" artwork.

This student brought his sketchbook from home with a drawing of an eagle that he wanted to recreate. He didn't change the composition much from his sketch, but I did get him to push the value more. He wanted to work with charcoal so I dug up a charcoal pencil buried in the back of the drawing cabinet.

I feel like I've been bemoaning the lack of time a lot- I see my intermediate students for 40 minute classes, every other week! I just wish I had started this earlier so more students would have had time to make their projects as finished as they could be. The drawing on the left is an example of one that came a long way, but still could have used more work. I talked to her about value (the area most likely to need more work in my students' drawings) and while she did improve the inside of her cave, it's still hard to see the other details in her work.

Colored pencils were the most popular drawing medium. A couple students did elect to use crayon (dragon drawing) and marker (drippy LOVE heart).

This nonobjective painting was sort of collaborative. Two friends used the same color palette but chose different shapes for their compositions. The other student painted stars.

 This student was going to add more objects floating around his ART letters but missed a class period. He did some extra work at home and brought it back in for me to add to Artsonia.

I wish you could see the drawing better in this photo! This student is on sort of a junior version of the city's Roller Derby team and drew a caricature poster of herself. Very cool.

This student asked me about making a sword- it's actually cut out of cardboard and painted. I told him we have to be careful with "weapons" in school but when he explained that he wanted it to look like his Minecraft sword (sooooo popular with my students) I said it was ok. It's not like a bloody, violent looking thing. Crazy story! One day when this student and about 30 others were working in my room during recess (freak snow day in May), he went to dispense tempera paint and the pump in my gallon bottle had a little clog in it. I guess he tried to fix it by just pressing harder because the next thing I know, there was a fine mist of yellow EVERYWHERE! The student actually had to go to the nurse to rinse out his eyes and borrow a new shirt. I knew it didn't bug him too much because he was laughing but he was just covered. I found paint  splatters at least 10 feet away on cabinet doors. I need to make a point to soak those pumps from time to time!

6th Choice- Cardboard Construction

My first post about 6th graders' choice project explained how it worked and sort of focused on collaborative projects. I had a hard time dividing all my photos up into project categories. I think about 3/4 of the construction projects were also collaborative. Some students built their own structures but helped each other when extra hands were needed to glue. Some students built their structures together from the planning to the painting. You might notice from the photos that there are lots of students working on the floor. I don't have my classroom set up in stations (yet) but have no fear, the students made their own! I had a couple tables scooted closer to outlets for glue guns but when those spaces were full, others solved the problem and found a spot.

*Note to self- invest in some extension cords or power strips to make hot glue guns easier to use!

I had a hunch that cardboard would be a popular material when my 6th graders designed their own lessons for their final elementary art project, but I had no idea just how in demand it would be! Thankfully, I had a lot of big sheets leftover from our bottle cap artwork and after our social worker saw we were using cardboard, she started saving inserts from the BackSnack program for us. I've already got quite the stash started for next school year. I have a small box of box cutters but I had never let the students use them before. That changed with this project. If students didn't have experience using a box cutter or had a complicated cut to make, I helped them. However, I found that most of the students wanting to build with cardboard had already used box cutters at home, or were at least comfortable using the cutters after I reminded them to keep their appendages out of the way. I also gave lots of reminders about putting a beat up piece of cardboard underneath to protect the tables and the floor. Another popular construction material was Art Straws. I inherited a couple of big boxes and we finally had a chance to use them.

I think there is a future engineer in this student! His bridge design was super precise, though it looks simple. Craftsmanship was also really nice.

 Here are a couple partner construction projects in the works. One group is working on table top while another works on the floor. You can also see the current organization method for cardboard scraps... I'm trying to come up with a good method for next year.

This student was the lone girl to choose construction. Right away, she had a clear idea which she described to me as wavy buildings with bright colors. She was probably the most competent with a box cutter. I like how she included negative space in her design and thought to cover the raw corrugated edges of her structure with ric-rac and yarn around the edge of the base. It reminds me a bit of Dr.Seuss architecture!

This last project was made by a student who I didn't know really had an interest in art before he started building. He had never caused any trouble, just didn't seem that into it. Once he started working on this project, I couldn't keep him out of my room! I'm only at my intermediate school two days a week but I think he spent every recess and extra block of time in the art room on those days. It started as one house, then he added the second, attached them to the base, added trees, and on the last work day he made the jeep that's a little hard to see in the center of the photo.

Construction gave the students tons of opportunities to design and solve problems and use visual-spatial skills. They had to think in three dimensions, which is something my students don't usually get much experience with due to storage problems. I think that TAB would help correct this problem. It's a lot easier to store 25 3D structures at a time than storing 130! I'll still have to think about what to do when more than one grade is allowed to explore 3D at once because that could put the project numbers back over 100. I'm hoping to get some open shelving to put above my built-in storage and may be able to use some of the metal shelves in my closet when supplies stored there get moved out into the regular work space.