Integrating Social Studies and the Arts EDU 626

Love! my elective this semester of graduate school. It is stress free. Well structured. Materials are given to us and the professor is a supportive, former Art Education professor, from MassArt. In fact, I reached out for some guidance (as my adviser has been very little help) and within an hour I had an emailed response with suggestions! Love!

Above is an embossing we did after briefly covering Mesopotamia and various cultures within. Other people in the class stuck with the line drawings of the gate of Ishtar or warriors that were provided, while I took the opportunity to experiment with a simple line design using analogous colors. I had seen the idea on a few other blogs lately and I have to say, the folks in my class were in awe of the color! Its just sharpie folks!

 

This is an Eye of Good Fortune that I did with a group of upper elementary and middle school kids during a summer program. Same kind of idea. However, we used flimsy aluminum foil and reinforced our lines with glue. Then sponge painted on top.

The same summer we did the Eye of Good Fortune, I did some guided drawings of pharaohs with younger students, as found at Art Projects for Kids. My professor had us create a note card with an Egyptian symbols, so I took my inspiration from the lesson I had taught. Others used the graphite on the back and tracing on the front method, to use the symbols provided. We also made bookmarks and I used hieroglyphics to spell my name.  

Prior to delving into History, we were "invited" into History by creating a time line and short biography. (I posted the image a few entries ago) We then talked about multiple intelligences and were asked to write some sort of biographical poem. We were also required to include some sort of texture rubbing on the folder. The above two images (ignore that the top one should be rotated) is my assignment. I wrote the following haiku inside:

Nothing compares to

the love I have for my gray

drawstring black sweatpants

You know that as soon as you get home from work, its sweatpants time! It seems that after sharing, my class also agrees.

Finally, this past week's assignment:

Terracotta tiles from the local hardware store, decorated with Ancient Greek key motifs using sharpie and white color pencil.  Bonus: walking down the 7th grade hall this week, I overheard a video the kids were watching and it was the SAME video we watched in class about Greece and Rome!

I can't WAIT to teach all this great stuff. Between actually making art, and really getting some good information about inquiry in the classroom and student participation, its been a great class and we are hardly half way through!