The Toledo Museum of Art, our local museum, has a beautiful Matisse mural called Apollo. Third graders used that piece as inspiration to create their cut paper designs!
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
File Folder Books: American Artists
I was so inspired by the following post from the blog, That Artist Woman, I could not wait to try this project. Please refer here: http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2012/02/how-to-make-file-folder-books.html for the original post/lesson plan! I adapted it slightly to fit our project.Gail is a wonderful art teacher and I just adore her blog-so inspirational!!
We created these books out of file folders. Here are the steps we followed to create them!
Day One: Painted file folders (I pre-folded and stapled them) with tempera paints
Day Two: Assembled books by attaching yarn to the binding, adding beads and letters to clothespins, adding metallic paint or modge podge, and titled our books
Day Three: Keith Haring Exploration
Day Four: James Rizzi Exploration
Day Five: Roy Lichtenstein Exploration
Day Six: George Rodrigue Exploration
Day Seven: Wayne Thiebaud Exploration
Day Eight: Andy Warhol Exploration
Day Nine: Jackson Pollock Exploration
Day Ten: Aminah Robinson Exploration
Basically, I taught a mini lesson about the artist and his/her work. We often used the artist's official website (for example, Aminah Robinson and Keith Haring have great websites for kids!) The students then created a mini work of art to go inside their books.
On our last day they completed a little Jeopardy game where they had read a statement about an artist and identify which artist was being discussed. I also made a brochure for their books discussing the art of each artist. The kids surprisingly remembered so many facts-even weeks later. They loved this project and were so proud to take them home!
