Where are the spiders? All over the art room!!!!

Like with many new projects, problems soon present themselves. We knew we would make the spiders body from news paper and tape covered with plaster-o-paris fabric. The legs, however, posed a whole set of problems. We have used different gauges of wire, fine chicken wire, and aluminum foil. One class even made their spider bodies from ceramic clay. There are upwards of 100 spiders in my room, most of them upside down. It looks pretty creepy.

Show Posters

Preparing for the spider art installation, the fourth grade artists had to create show posters. I had shown the student artists old B movie posters for inspiration as well as modern art show posters. These posters are to peak the interest of the rest of the school. Everyone is anxiously awaiting the infestation.

Louise Bourgeois

In preparing for their installation, the fourth grade artists learned about the french artist Louise Bourgeois. They learned that Louise used the symbol of the spider to represent her parents who were weavers. The students made connections with this work to the Dada artists they studied previously. Namely identifying the use of scale change and juxtaposition.

Spider facts

The student arachnologists in fourth had to create and post post an illustrated spider fact sheet. These fact sheets were posted around school for student and staff edification.

Hot and Cold Colors for Third Grade

Hot and cold colors, patterning and lots of attention went into the creation of these paintings. This is a lesson I found on line and it was the strong images that caught my eye. Some of the students painted many hands and some outlined their heads or silhouettes.

The Color Wheel

The third grade started off the year by learning about the complementary colors and making a collage with mirror image symmetry. Then they completed a color wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colors. This is a lesson the kids could do over and over. They love the magic of color mixing.

More Surrealistic Collages

Yes, we could photo shop our collages, but we choose to do them the old fashioned way. Here are the copied version of some of the collages and the next step will be to hand color them in with colored pencils.