People and Their Art: Molas from the Kuna Indians of San Blas Island

     My students in 4th grade enjoyed making these Mola's inspired by the Kuna Indians.  To prepare them for this project I showed them a DVD by Peggy Flores on creating art inspired by the San Blas Island, Kuna Indians.  It helped them see the steps that would be involved in making the paper molas.  Fortunately I have an example of a fabric mola made by the Kuna Indians and we discussed how it would compare to the familiar craft of applique quilting.  The process is basically back wards from adding fabric to the top of the background piece.  After planning what animal would be the focus of their project they drew their animal onto the background paper.  They used their scissors to poke through the center and cut their animal out.  I stressed that the negative space around the animal was the part of the paper that we were keeping so they were to take care with that part of their design.  They chose from bright construction paper and glued on to the back of the top piece.  This new color filled the animal space.  They then drew a line within their animal leaving some of the color for their design.  This process continued until the came to a part where they could use an exacto knife to add more interesting details to their animal.  The scraps that were left from the cutting were used to make a design on the background of thier artwork.  

     The students really enjoyed this project and the results were great.  I've done this project ever since I started at the elementary level.  Since showing the DVD from Flores I have abtained a larger number of excellent end products.  It helps those visual learners to see where we are going with the project.  Also in the pasts I only used scissors but recently allowed the use of exacto knives.This has really helped with the finer details.  I demonstrate how to use the knives with a cutting mat underneath and stress safety.   

     I'm looking forward to displaying all these Mola's at the November 25th art show.



People and Their Art: Aborigine Art

This year's Annual Art Show will showcase "People and Their Art".  Different grades will focus on different cultures.  My 5th grade Students are looking at Australian's native people and their art.  We looked at posters of Aborigine art and watched a DVD by Peggy Flores on creating art inspired by the Aborigine's.







Student's enjoyed learning about the Aborigine's exray style art and began to plan what Australian animal they would create in this style.  After they drew a preliminary drawing they drew on colored construction paper.  Next they drew the "exray" of their animal and divided their background.  The fun part was coloring the spaces in with colored pencils and then adding marker patterns over top.  Most all students agree that the end products are very impressive.  Students are looking forward to their second Aborigine inspired artwork.  We will watch the second half of Flores DVD and then plan for our dot style dream painting.

Word Wall Teaching Tool

My Art Word Wall is one of my favorite teaching tools.  I use it to display the key words and or Artist's name relating to my art lessons.  I have one for each grade, Kindergarten through sixth grade.  When a grade level is finished with a lesson I hang the new lesson's vocabulary words.  When I first hung my word wall I just put the words but the photos with them makes them more useful and appealing especially for younger grades. This is an old photo so there are some without pictures. 
















When I am reviewing a lesson with classes students often look to the word wall to see if they can find the answers to the questions that I ask.  The pictures and words help reinforce some the elements of the lesson that I want the students to remember. 

Gustav Klimt Inspired Trees by second grade

My second grade classes enjoyed making their own Tree of Life.  To get started we looked at Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life then discussed what patterns and shapes that the students could see in Klimt's art. We first made a small tree with curling branches on an ATC (artist trading card, 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch miniture artwork)  I showed them how to start out with the trunk and work up adding branches on either side with several curled branches on the main branch.  They were then ready for thier large artwork.  They choose from a variety of bright papers.  After they drew their tree to their satasfaction they outlined it in crayola construction paper crayons.  They filled the inside of their tree with shapes and patterns.  Some shapes they borrowed from Klimt and some they created on their own.  After the tree was filled with shape and color they were ready to outline their tree in glitter.  Students were excited to take this finished project home.  Although Klimt doesn't use glitter in his tree I'm sure he would aprove.