Model Neighborhood

One class had a project. They had to create and label important things in a typical neighborhood. Here are some of the structures

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is the awareness of something you weren't aware of beforehand. My high school class was given an assignment. Construct a representational model house exploring mixed media. Also there had to be a sign on the house somewhere that was acknowledgement of what they have changed or would like to change. Here is an example.

Resources

Over the year of teaching art to students with special needs, I have used various websites for ideas and inspiration. I also have some tried and true books I refer to on a regular basis. The first is 300 lessons in art. This book provides both two dimensional as well as three dimensional projects. It a great resource for all art teachers. The next book is entitled " Making Sense of Art". This book provides great activities for students diagnosed with autism and other developmental delays. The last book is called " Discovering Great Artists". This book provides some art history lessons about famous artists past and present and activities that correspond with that particular artists' art style.

Limitation

This activity is sure to get the creative juices flowing! Students are given a theme and ask to use what is available on the tables to create. This is a good activity for the beginning of the year to assess students' likes and dislikes and skill level but can be done anytime to assess students'

high order thinking.

Mandalas

This week we worked on mandalas. Mandalas are all the craze right now with adult coloring books so I set out to explain the history behind them.  Mandala in Sanskrit means "circle".Mandalas are used in the country of India for spiritual rituals. They can also be used to calm the mind and help with focus.  We also mentioned how this is an example in art and design of radial symmetry.

We substituted the original shapes used for geometric shapes and used grid lines to help keep track of what belonged in each section.

Wire Contour

Contour drawings are essentially outlines of shapes. To learn about contour we used wire instead of a pencil or paintbrush.

Throwing

Throwing on the pottery wheel is exciting as well as a very demanding event for an artist. In my class, I showed the students the steps to throw a basic cylinder on the wheel.

Hand Building Clay

Everyone or at least everyone should be familiar with hand building. Two common techniques often taught are coil pot and pinch pot building. Here are a few examples.

Paper Mache

Paper Mache translates in french to mean "chewed paper". In the past linen and papyrus was used to build layers. Nowadays we use newspaper. The mix I use is regular school white glue and water. We had an assignment to construct a bowl with paper mache. We used balloons as our mold. He are the results.

Armature

Armatures are often used by sculptors. Armatures are essentially skeletons or the framework for sculptures.  We also studied Alberto Giacometti as he constructed armatures as his art.The students used copper wire to make their skeleton and some used plaster on top of their armature to construct their structure.

Found object Robots

So the task today was to use the available materials to construct a robot. The students had a blast. Tip to all the educators out there open ended projects work really well with students as it allows them to assume some control of the assignment and it will also allow for great buy in.

Mosaic

Mosaic originated in Africa. Africans would put fancy stones and ivory pieces into a cement mix. We adapted  this technique in America by using glass tile pieces. Here are some examples.

Paper Quilling

Paper quilling is an art form that started in the Early Renaissance in which nuns and monks took scraps of gilded paper( usually made of gold or silver) and decorate book and other objects in the church. In our lesson we used construction paper strips to create the various rolls and scrolls that make these works of art look great. Here are some examples

Struggle

So I have a kiosk for my classroom to display student work. We also have monthly character themes. February's theme is struggle. All throughout the month I highlighted famous African American artists who struggled to gain acceptance. Here are some images.

African American History

During February, we discuss several African American artists. Two being Faith Ringgold and Romare Bearden. Faith Ringgold is an artist who is best know for her textile artwork. Romare Bearden was a Harlem Reinassance artist who is most famous for is collage work. With this activity we combined the two discplines to create our works of art!

Melted Crayons

My students love this activity! I dont know if its the fact they can hold hot and dangerous things or if they like the colors but someone wants to create one all the time after we did these as an assignment earlier this year.

Scratchboard

Scratchboard art employs an art board or card coated with  black india ink. The image is then scratched into board or card using a wooden stylus. Here is an example.

Bead Mosaic

This an example of beads used to decorate an image. The students in this class were studying panda so we used a panda image to decorate.

African Art

We started looking at African Art. I taught the students about African masks and their use in African culture. I told them that in a good deal of African cultures art is created to be used for events like ceremonies and festivals. They don't create art to just sit on walls. Their assignment was to create a mask. They used plaster strips on top of pre-made mask molds and painted them. Here are some of the examples.