One-Point Perpsective Cities

One-point perpsective. A challenge in its own to even say. To teach, is a whole other ball of knots. I have taught one-point perspective for 4 years now. Every year, I change and adapt to the technology I have to do it better. This year was probably the best yet. 

So to start, I actually do a study on just the vanishing point and understanding that those diagonal lines go to the point. So we just do shapes the first day. And I show them how to cut them off before they get to the point. Which leads us to day two, city time. I go step by step on how to draw a city using one-point perspective as a group. 

Third day is where the fun really begins and I feel a huge jump in quality happened. CHROMEBOOKS! Thats right, I flipped the second half like a pancake. I put all my demo videos on screen-cast and provided a link to the students. This way, they can pick up where they need help on their own and go at their own pace or re watch steps over and over. Now this didn't solve all the problems but it helped. I love screen-cast because it also allows you around that whole youtube thing. 

But students got to use it for their sketching and then chromebooks again if they wanted to add references to items. 

Lastly, because these are cities they worked hard on, I had them do some writing on them. This time, rather then me trying to teach them and get them to write in art. I asked their teacher to do writing with them. Just gave the basic info on what I was looking for in it. SOOO MUCH BETTER! And finished off with critique! 

At the end I even had these kids self-assess themselves with rubrics and give me notes for next year. One said to just go for the chromebook videos first. Might use that advice to see how it turns out. 

Yes, it has been done before but the reason I am deciding to post this project is due to my technology usage.

Recycled Kindness Monsters

"We are doing research into recycling, is there anything you would want to do with them for that in art class?"

Yep, that is how the recycled kindness monsters started. I wanted to start by having it be 3D to prepare my 2nd graders for next years as 3rd graders. 

So to start, had students bring in a box. Not a super big box but not super tiny. Then using small snack bags filled with kitty litter. (my go to for weighing anything down) Students had to figure out how many they might of needed to keep their box from falling over. Then we gessoed! I had them gesso so painting over those bright colors of some boxes would be easier. 

For painting, I let them go at it with whatever colors they wanted. This gave them an opportunity to experience getting their own paint and taking responsibility for my paint bottles themselves. Plus getting to mix paints however they wanted. 

Now at this point I introduced the book I used "My Friend the Monster" a little book about a family that moves into a house and the son finds a monster. The monster is kind and just wants to be friends. I used this to base the "what are we doing with these??" question.

Last the fun part. I have been saving supplies for them to build their monsters with for awhile. We used yarn, fabric, and paper scraps along with cardboard tubes and spools. My one design requirement for these monsters was the mouth. It had to be saying something kind that they would want to hear every day. A motivational saying to get them going. Some really got it and had great ideas. A few, not so much. 

Note: to get the tubes and spools to stick I did have to get out the hot glue gun. I manned it and gave students a limit of visits. 

I would like to do this project again but might put more parameters on the size of the box and requirement of the mouth. See if I can get the classroom teacher to come up with some good phrases. Otherwise I feel successful in this integration and sort of diving into maker space. 

Where the Wild Things Are

I do not know any art teacher who does not like "Where the Wild Things Are" Seriously. So I thought of a project to have my 1st experience it and have them focus on shapes, texture and a tiny bit of landscape developement/depth, with watercolor paints. 

To start we read the book and discussed the themes behind it. Next we observed the art style around it and what we noticed about the body designs of the wild things. Noticing the shapes and size and that there was texture. I had them example what would be good lines to use for textures and what they should include in their wild things. IE no robots? or pirates? Wild things are more like two animals put together. 

So we sketched and practiced with sketchbooks and white boards to help out. 

I really pushed for big! And to follow those shapes with texture. I had them draw them with pencil first then use crayons to do outline and just draw their texture. They asked why they couldn't color it in and I explained they will get to experiment with watercolor paints and they will discover something interesting about watercolor paints and crayon. And showed them pictures of the book pages again to understand they are on ground and the sky goes to that ground line. 

They had a ball with painting and I had them develop good habits of setting up their space and understanding how to do painting without smooshing the brush down. This was their first time with me using the big 16 count set. 

I would like to do this project again but really need to push more of the DO NOT color in idea. And have the animal mixed. I had a couple give their wild thing names so I might play with that more next time and have them maybe express an emotion and story about their wild thing after Max left them.