Saturday, February 22, 2014

Field Trip to the Liberty Science Center

We had a lot of fun on our field trip to the Liberty Science Center last week! Several activities had exciting overlaps between art and science. Definitely have some new ideas for interdisciplinary future projects! Here are some photos:











Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Superhero Collages


The Bees and Eagles continued using collage to create their own superheroes in this lesson. They started with a worksheet comic strip to brainstorm and sketch different scenes. We learned about the layout of comics, sequencing, and how to brainstorm visually. Our launching question was: how would you wake up and travel to school in the morning if you had superhero powers?







Next, the students were given a kit of paper shapes to proportionally build their superhero. The Eagles learned about several influential artists from the Renaissance (Caravaggio, DaVinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello), who rediscovered anatomically correct human proportion. With the paper kits, the students took turns modeling their superhero pose, while the rest of the class practiced arranging them into the models pose. 





At the end of class, the students pasted down the shapes into the superhero action pose of their choice. They continued to build up their collages using different kinds of paper and shapes to create a completed scene. The Big Eagles painted on top of the collages using acrylic paint. The vocabulary words for this lesson were: background, foreground, transform, props, collage, sidekick, pose, details, special effects. Below are some completed collages by the Bees and Little Eagles:








Charcoal Collage Self-Portraits

The Big Eagles and Elephants completed their Charcoal Collage Portraits. They did a great job learning how use new materials (vine and compressed charcoal with kneaded erasers) to create a variety of textures and patterns, then carefully layering them to create a likeness of themselves.