Welcome 32,000 BC! 

 I am so excited about this new art experience I just created for my students.  I brought in an exhibition about cave art from teachersdiscovery.com so that the whole school can be taught a unit about prehistoric art.  I wanted the kids to really experience rock art the way that it is meant to be experienced, the way that the artist originally painted the art.  That is to say, not on a flat surface, and in a cave.

 Here is how I made a cave for my students.  Starting at the art room door I hung sheets from the ceiling using clothes pins and string, to basically make I giant sheet tent.  (kind of like at home when my kids and I need to make a fort).  Then I put a digital projector on the floor in the back of the rectangular tent and angled it up to project on the walls and ceiling on the tent.  the uneven surface of the sheets clothe-pinned together was very effective.  I found that the structure of the tent needed to be wider towards the back so that there weren't big shadows cast.  There is an awesome website that is a virtual tour of Lascaux.  [Note: on PC computer the F11 key will hide the Internet tool bar, making the virtual experience even cooler] The virtual tour only lasts about 10 minutes and that's if you click and explore all of the different images available.  To make the experience last I put together a slide show of prehistoric art from around the world, which lasts about another 15 minutes.  This has been a great end of the year activity.  Next week I'm going to line the halls with crumpled up butcher paper and let the kids make drawings using charcoal and chalk pastels, then they can sign there art with a hand print.  That way I can take down and pass back all of the artwork, without leaving the walls of the school hallways bare for the last 2 weeks of the year.

Cut Paper Ocean Envroment

After learning about the art work of Wyland students make there own under the sea scenes. While doing this, students are learning about overlapping, tucking, foreground, middle-ground and background.

Materials Needed

• Glue
• Scissors
• 12x18 blue construction paper
• Construction paper scrapes
• Crayons

Student Examples

5 Easy Steps to Making an Expressionist Self-Portrait.

Grades 4th-9th

In this lesson students will create a self-portrait in an Expressionist style.   

Step 1:   Students should first learn about the Expressionist movement and study works of art by Edward Munch, especially "The Scream."

Step 2: Before this studio and before you show the video you need to take digital pictures of your students making some kind of expression.  Then print them off on a full 8.5x11 size paper.  This can be printed in black and white. 

Step 3: Make sure that you have all of the materials listed below.  Also you should practice making the prints a few times before hand.  That way you are much less likely to mess up a students drawing.

Step 4: On the day of the studio set up a printing station.  At your desk or in the back of the room at a spare table would be fine.  You don't need a lot of space. 

Step 5: Show this video to your students, and then let them do their project.  I have found that it takes about 45 minutes for the whole class to do the drawing and complete all of the monoprints and then another 45-50 minutes to color it in. 

Materials

•  An 8.5x11 photo of each student making some kind of expressive face
• One piece of transparency film per student
• One black vis-a-vis per student
• A fine mist bottle full of water, I use an old Fabreze bottle
• A box of tissues
• a rolling pin
• Crayons for the students, with plenty of color choice

Student Examples