Mehndi Hand Sculptures

I love cross curricular teaching and this lesson allows me to work with our 6th grade religion/social studies teacher.  While she teaches about Islam, I introduce the kids to the beautiful world of Mehndi!  Another art teacher found this lesson through Dick Blick and I adapted it and made it one of my favorite lessons to teach (who am I kidding--I say that about all of my lessons; I can't pick just one favorite!). 

I introduce the students to the history and significance of mehndi.  Most of the students have no idea what I am talking about when I first use the word "mehndi" but as soon as I start my slideshow and it has a photograph of an adorned hand, I have tons of people go "Oh! I know that!  I always called it 'henna' instead!"  And then I get into how henna is the medium and mehndi is the art...yadda yadda yadda...BAM!  We're creating our own on vinyl gloves! 

I have the students create some patterns and radial designs in their sketchbook first, so that they have some ideas to start with.  Then I teach them about creating a flow between patterns and designs via color and interaction.  Once they have a jumping off point I have them work while wearing the glove as an added challenge.  It requires them to be more careful and mindful with their mark making since they are working on a 3D surface.  Once they have their glove designed, I have them stuff the hand with a polyester fill and a small (upside down) cup so that the glove can stand.  The results are amazing! 

Gestural Sculpture

I love creating sculptures with my kiddos!  It is always fun and exciting for them as well as it is for me.  They come up with such great ideas and I love seeing them try out a new medium.  For my fourth graders, working with plaster is new and exciting.  We make gestural sculptures that imply movement and they all come out so fantastically unique.  For a detailed description of the lesson itself, check out my post from 2014 here

Otherwise, just enjoy these fabulous creations from this year:

An eclectic dance party--someone dabbing alongside a hula dancer!

We had our fair share of dabbing sculptures this year

Breakdancing, dabbing, handstands, hockey players...we've got it all!

Mario!!!!  We also have a dancer doing the splits with troll hair behind him!  These kids are so creative!

Sketchbooks! Sketchbooks! Sketchbooks!

SPOILER ALERT; More amazing drawings like this (from 6th-8th graders!!!!)  if you scroll down!

I started having my middle school students do sketchbook assignments this year.  We've always used our sketchbooks in class for planning, free drawing, doodling, etc but I wanted my students to push their talents and figure out what their artistic interests were a little bit more.  So I started requiring them to do three sketchbook assignments each trimester--that's about one drawing every three-four weeks...nothing major, right?  I created a list of 25 options for each grade level 6th-8th (if you'd like a copy of my lists, let me know).  These are the requirements I gave them (this is just my 6th grade list, each grade level has their own):

Then the magic happened!  They gave me amazingly beautiful and brilliant drawings!  Enjoy!

This one didn't photograph well but I have to show it off--this 8th grader drew a tiger in the jungle using pointillism!!!

Worth noting: This was drawn based off of a photo of this student's grandfather that played college football-such an amazing tribute!!!

Fly

As a "welcome back" project (I always like to star the year with something easy, personal and engaging--this year I also made it collaborative!)  I had every student in the school decorate a feather- this is just something I drew up and made photocopies of.  I had two versions of the feather--one that curved left and one that curved right

As you can see on my feather sheets, I had the kids include personal symbolism and goals for themselves for the year.  They could also add any other decorative drawings and designs they wanted to fill and finish off their feather

Once the feathers were complete, I assembled our wings and wrote "Fly" above the wings; inspired by Erin Hanson's gloriously famous poem that is frequently quoted around the world, "What if I fall?  Oh but my darling, what if you fly?"

I photographed each of my students in front of the wings and shared it with their families via Seesaw (this is an amazing app...are you familiar?  Ask me about it!  It's an amazing way to privately share images with parents and I often have the kids add to their seesaw account themselves, so it doesn't even take time out of my day to keep it updated).

Wings, ready to be hung

Me, taking them for a test fly--they were hanging outside of our office so that anyone could admire, be inspired by, and/or photograph themselves with them!

Art Club

I've fallen really far behind on my blog (mostly because I use a lot of the same lessons and it is easier to justify not updating photos of new work) but I recently realized that I never show off what we are doing in Art Club.  I work at a K-8 building but I only open Art Club up to my middle school kids (6th-8th grades).  We meet every other week and the way I have it set up, I will always propose a lesson/project but they are not required to participate.  Should they choose to opt out of my lesson, they need to come up with their own art project.  As long as I have the materials, I let them do whatever project they have come up with.  But most of the time, they participate in my lessons.  I keep instruction a little more minimal because I want them to have more freedom in their making and ideas, some of them really take off with this and others request more guidance and structure.  Enough about how I run the club, let me show off what they've been up to--brief descriptions of the process below each set of photos!

Foil Sculpture:  Creating a small sculpture from foil; examples above are: a squirrel with acorn, eagle/hawkman, Pikachu, and a dancing woman.  This was actually more of a challenge to the kids than I had anticipated.  Getting them to figure out how to manipulate the foil was a good problem solving task for them!

Marbled Tiles:  permanent marker drawn onto ceramic tiles, use eye droppers of Isopropyl Alcohol (thank you science room for beakers and eye droppers!) to put a few droplets of alcohol onto the drawing and watch the magic happen!  They change so much as they dry, it is amazing!

Tape Construction

Tape Party in the Kiln Room

Throwing snowballs

Spiderman Tapeman

Tape Sculptures:  Art Club members created their own groups and worked together to form their sculptures piece by piece.  They started with saran wrap-one layer per body part- then wrapped the same area in multiple layers or clear packing tape.  They carefully cut themselves out of each piece and retaped the body part back together where it was cut.  Once all body parts were created, the entire sculpture was taped together and formed. We then hung them in the library of our school to show them off.  (The party in the kiln was a bonus for the sculptures, they didn't actually stay there for long)

Last Art Club of the Year Activities:

Art Rug, Bubble Paint, & Tie-Dye!

I cut up a bunch of tshirts and bought some Latch Hook fabric/mesh.  I asked the students to write me a message or draw me a picture on a t-shirt strip then tie it onto the mesh so that I can have a rug filled with love and art!

Bubble paint!!!  This activity kept popping up in my Facebook newsfeed and I'm so glad it did.  I loved it and so did my kids!  I had them make their own bubble blower with a waterbottle (cut in half), some vegetable mesh/bag, and some tape.  The bubbles are a soap, glycerin combo with liquid watercolors added in.  So fun!  Too bad it was raining outside, we would have made a bigger mess had it been possible!

Bubble Paint!

Bubble Paint!

Tie-Dye!  I love ending the year with tie-dye...it's always an Art Club favorite!  Pretty self explanatory.  Again, I wish it wasn't raining because this is best done outside (for easier clean up)