Miss Arty Pants: February 2013

I'm Done! Now What?

~~Every art teacher~~ Every teacher has a handful of students at any given time tell them that they are done, there is nothing they can do to improve, and they totally understand what they did in their assignment/project/whatever. In my classroom, I like to provide supplemental projects that students can complete if they finish early. If it is only a few minutes early or we are going to be moving on soon, I let them check out my bookshelf or art materials just to experiment with; but if they are way ahead of everyone else in the class, I offer a follow up project.

To follow up our Mandalas, I asked the students to make a radially symmetrical magazine collage. I encouraged them to choose two or more pages from magazines based on color and to try to pick out pages with high contrast from one another. They cut their pages up snowflake style (the ol' fold and cut method) and saved all of their pieces. They then set about the task of collaging their favorite pieces together to create a colorful, radially symmetrical design. I let them choose their background color and we glued them down (onto construction paper).

More Student Examples!

I'm always excited to show off the work of my students, and I couldn't be more proud with the variety I've been getting from this group! As you look, you will notice that some students weren't able to finish their shading but I wanted to share their work because they put so much time into them! As an art teacher, I find that it is best to highlight how well they did with the time that they had instead of the fact that they didn't finish. I didn't post all of them, because I have 75 students, but I did include a range of work with various media choices. Some of them are so gorgeous, I want them as a tapestry! Maybe next time I'll try this with batiks