End of the Year Activities

With only a week and a half to go, we are quickly wrapping things up in the art room. As of tomorrow, our eighth graders are on a three day camp trip! And I will be attending a luncheon to celebrate one of my students' accomplishments in poster contest this past fall, later on in the week, so there is very little time left!

In an effort to get rid of some of my scraps, I have introduced sixth grade to Matisse and his collage techniques. We are covering plain old manila paper in bright, colorful construction and painted paper scraps. We briefly talked about positive and negative space as well.

As a culmination of the year, and their three years in middle school, eighth graders have been designing story cubes based on Dr. Suess' "Oh the Places You'll Go." The idea was to have a story flow from panel to panel of a cube template. The results have been mixed as some students have tapped out while others love the idea and have taken it to heart.

I wanted to be able to do something three dimensional with seventh grade before the end of the year. I also have varying degrees of abilities and behaviors. So, spray starch coffee filter Chihuly inspired macchia designs it is! I've started this one day lesson by showing students this interview http://www.chihuly.com/cbs-early-show.aspx and various macchia pieces from Chihuly. We then used plain old crayola washable markers to fill a coffee filter, inverted them over cups and sprayed with starch. So far the kids have loved it! The starch gets a bit messy and sticks to the table, but all in good fun. I hope they are happy because they look super cool!

Also a quick, one day activity that not everyone got to participate in, was my "Art Show Critique." Students came down to what was left of the show and with a partner answered a series of questions about a piece of their choice, not from their grade. Its not exactly a critiques, but it gets students to look more closely at an artwork and begin to analyze it. 

1. Describe what you see: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. What stands out the most when you first look at this work of art? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Explain the reason why you notice the thing you mention in number 2. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. What leads your eye around the page? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. What is the subject of the artwork? ________________________________________________________________

6. How do you think the artist made this work? What materials do you think he/ she used? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7. Circle which elements of art the artist used

LINE         SHAPE              COLOR      VALUE       TEXTURE           FORM       SPACE

8. HOW did the artist use at least 2 of these elements? Think about:         BALANCE       CONTRAST PATTERN EMPHASIS     MOVEMENT    RHYTHM         UNITY

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9. What feelings or meanings could this artwork represent? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10. What titles could you give this artwork? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

11. What other things interest you about this artwork? Why did you pick this one out of the hundreds in the show? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________