Classroom
curriculum and units
ELEMENTS OF ART AND PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN:
For the first quarter or semester (depending on the amount of time I spend with each grade level), I begin with traditional art curriculum including the Elements of Art and Principles of Design. Each week, we focus on one Element of Art, and I combine several Principles of Design in with each weekly lesson. Each day may focus on one or more principles at a time. The projects may be short, daily compositions or more complex pieces like the collaborative piece shown below. Middle Schoolers learned about the Element of Design: Color as well as several Principles including: Variety, Symmetry and Balance, Direction and Movement, and Texture.
In this collaborative, week long project done by the 7th and 8th graders, we began by learning Color Theory. Each student is given only the primary colors in acrylic paint (red, yellow, and blue). That's it!
Then they learn about how colors mix. Mixing into Secondary, Tertiary, Complimentary, Warm and Cool, and finally Tints, Gradients, and Values. As you can see from the picture to the left, they each created their own Color Wheel on a 12"x20" sheet of art paper.
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After this exercise, which takes about two days, they get their canvas and begin their first layer. Each subsequent day, they layer on patterns based on the color theory they are learning that day. To make this piece striking and show the different colored layers underneath, they use tape to create patterns and textures between each layer.
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What I love about this collaboration, is that even though each student begins with the same palates and directions, each painting is truly unique! And when they are all put together, they mesh into another coherent and uniquely beautiful piece! This piece is a permanent installation in the school library.
"ART AROUND THE WORLD"
After we hash out the basics of the elements and principles, we take our newly created foundation and put it to work. For the next quarter or semester, we throw our magic beachball globe around the world and whatever country we land on, we learn about the next day. As with the previous lessons, some may be a one day project while others may last for several days. What I really want the students to get out of this unit is more than just fun art (and it is fun!), but I want them to learn an appreciation for art and culture, history, sociology, geography, and learning out to problem solve to create these somewhat accurate representations of the artwork with the materials at hand. Each project is grade specific. As you can see by the image below, we had a bulletin board in the hallway where we kept track of our adventures. By the end of the quarter, we had visited 21 countries and learned about ancient civilizations and artifacts all the way to current and modern day art.
This is one of my FAVORITE projects. It requires a lot of layering and mixed media supplies, and the kids loved it! The country we landed on was Madagascar! While researching for a project that would fit 1st-3rd graders, I ran across a painting by Henri Rousseau, a French artists from 1890's, who loved the jungle. I also wanted to incorporate a little bit of pop culture with the animals from the animated movie, Madagascar. These two things fit together perfectly. The kids started with their animal. They had a choice of animals native to the region and similar to the characters in the movie (lion, tiger, giraffe, lemur, hippo, zebra, etc). Once they had their animal drawn, colored and cut out, they pasted it on a green background (12"x20"). The last step was to give it some depth and texture. We had TONS of faux leaves and flowers they layered onto their portraits to create the illusion of their animals peering out of the jungle just like in Rousseau's painting. Aren't they amazing?!
What they learned:
Animals and geography of Madagascar,
Artist background of Henri Rousseau,
and Mixed Media Collage techniques.
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