Project #13 Lacy Clay Ornaments

The last lesson was mine and Melanie Jorgenson’s, and we taught our lesson on clay and lace. Our project for our students was to create clay ornaments using lacy or metal filigree designs. We started out the lesson with the different vocabulary that was included in our lesson. We then explained the history of lace and the history of metal filigree to our students. We then instructed the students to draw out their design of what they will use as their ornament on the construction paper. They were instructed to then outline their design with a permanent marker so they could see it through the wax paper when they taped the wax paper to their construction paper. They then were given a baggie filled with water and clay. They were instructed to mix the clay and water evenly, so they were showed to work the clay in the baggie with their hands to evenly mix it. After their clay was mixed together well, they were instructed to cut a small hole in the bottom corner of the baggie so they could squeeze the clay through there. They then were instructed to apply a thick layer of clay over their drawn design. It was to be thick so that it would hold together and not break. When they were done tracing their ornament with clay, they were instructed to paint their ornament with water color paints, using either warm color schemes or cool color schemes. They were also told to add a tint or a shade to the paint. When the ornament was dried, they needed to tie a ribbon around their ornament so they could hang it up. This ribbon needed to match their color scheme used in the paint.

We used a 3-D cabinet for our display of the art projects. We hung up a few of the ornaments and laid the rest on the bottom, on top of a sheet of lace. We put a blue background to the display using a black border. We used the saying “There are no mistakes in lace, just misdirected threads that present a new challenge” by: Barbara Bulgarelli, in our display.

An extension activity that I would include in this project would be to start working with creating a “metal filigree” project. I would have the students find a flower pot or another product, or I will provide pots or vases for the students, and then they could look at metal filigree and create a clay outline on the pots or vase. Instead of making an ornament, they could create the design on a flower pot, and then let it dry to show the metal filigree look.

Project #12 Stepping Stones

This lesson was taught by Kirsten Cronin and Jackie Eikamp and they taught us about stepping stones. Before the day of their lesson, they asked us to bring in a photo that meant a lot to us, and they laminated the photo for us. They started by teaching us the different techniques or designs of stepping stones. They gave us a piece of paper then to draw our design out, or what we were going to use in our stepping stone. They called us over to then have cement poured in our plastic containers. They instructed that we shake the cement around in the container so that air bubbles would come to the top so we could pop them. After that, we were instructed to place paper towels on the top to soak up some of the excess water from the cement. Then we were instructed to start decorating our stepping stone using our picture and different colored stones, glass pieces, and marbles. I used balance in my stepping stone, which shows that each side of the stepping stone is the same. I decorated mine with my picture of my family. My family means everything to me, and so I decided to put a picture of them on my stone. I used pink, blue, green, and orange stones to decorate the stepping stone, as well as using large marbles to hold my picture in. I also place a butterfly on my stone to add color and the spring/summer time feeling!

An extension activity that I would have my students do with this project would be to include science. We would work with cement and the chemical make up to see why it hardens when water is added to it. We could then experiment with other fluids such as coffee, or juice to see what that does to the cement. We would then make our own stepping stones using these fluids and see what different colors the fluids create.

Project #11 Print It!

This lesson was taught by Allison Vetch and Laura Opsahl. They started out the lesson by explaining the art instruments that we would be using and telling us a little about each of them. They then read through an Easter book where a chicken would lay different colors and different designs of eggs. We were instructed to draw a picture of our own egg that we would be printing later. I drew flowers and ribbons on my egg as well as including my name. We then were given a piece of Styrofoam to draw our egg into. We used sticks to puncture the Styrofoam into our designs of our eggs. We then went on to the ink and we used rollers to roll the ink onto the Styrofoam pieces. Then we placed a piece of paper over the foam and pressed them tightly together so that ink covered the entire design of our egg onto the paper. There were 5 colors of ink to choose from. I chose yellow, red, blue, and silver ink to roll onto my foam piece. We were then instructed to let our prints dry for at least 24 hours. After they were dry, we glued all 4 prints onto a construction paper.

For an extension activity to this project, I would have my students experiment with using paint brushes on the prints instead of rollers. The reason they would need to use paint brushes would be so that they can add as many colors to their picture as possible. For example, instead of my egg being one color only, we would use the paint brushes to color the ribbons red and the flowers blue, I would paint my name silver and have the outside of the egg be yellow. The pictures would not just be one color, but be full of color.

Project #10 Scratch Art

This next lesson was taught by Justin Kiefer and Nicole Bruemmer. They taught us how to create scratch art. They explained the scratching terms of hatching and cross hatching. We also learned how to create other designs by simply making small circles to shows dots or by just leaving a space free of scratches. They also emphasized that we scratch on the paper hard enough to draw the designs, but not too hard that we dull the wooden stick. They started out the project by giving each of us a different shape and we were to create any picture using our imagination of what we thought it most resembled, and then we finished drawing that picture. We then drew this same picture on our scratch sheet with the wooden stick. I created my picture into a goose. I used hatching and cross hatching on my scratch art. To finish our project, we placed a border around our picture to bring out the scratch art.

An extension activity that I would teach with this lesson is to have them create a story of their picture. It can be a short story, but the students must be able to show the story in the picture by creating the necessary scratches “bring the picture alive!”For example, my picture is of a goose. I would write a story about how maybe the goose lost her baby and she is in a panic. I would have to add more scratches to my picture to show my goose panicking by scratching ruffles in her feathers and by the scratching worry lines on her face. I think students would look more into their scratch arts and they would easily be able to bring their picture “alive!”

Project #9 Andy Warhol Pop Art

The next lesson was taught by Ms. Katzenberger and Ms. Mammenga and they taught us about the Andy Warhol pop art using oil crayons. They described to us that when he drew a picture, he would create the same picture with 3 replicas, each in different colors or shades. We started out by choosing an item from the table and were asked to draw a replica of it as close to it as possible. My group chose a flower watering can. When we were finished with drawing the item, we traced them with a black sharpie marker. We then were asked to choose a color scheme that we wanted to work with for our picture. I chose cool colors; purple, darker purple, and blue. We chose 3 colors and started with coloring the object with one color; coloring the outside of the object with a different color; and then coloring the rest of the paper with a different color. We learned how to blend our colors so that they blended together nicely, by pulling the colors with our finger tips. It was pretty cool to see! When we were finished with coloring our pictures, we put a black frame around the picture. We measured an exact inch of frame that would go around the entire picture.

An extension activity that I would do with this for my class is to have them write about the differences they see in each picture, and how each color scheme in the picture makes them feel. Questions that I would use would be; How does the warm color scheme make the picture look and make you feel?, or How does the cool color scheme make you feel?. After they are finished with their pictures, they would be able to look into the picture and pull out what they think of the colors and how the colors make them feel. I know when I saw the water picture painted with warm colors, I thought of it sitting on the table early in the morning with the sun shining in on it. Sometimes, different color schemes can remind you of things that you have seen before in your life.

Project #8 Rainbow Fish Collage

For the third peer lesson, Ms. Anderson and Ms. Deslauriers taught us about paper collages. They started out by reviewing the story, “Rainbow Fish.” They gave us an outline of 2 fish and had us free hand draw the fish we wanted to use for our collage. We were not allowed to trace the fish. We cut the fish out and then began ripping different colored construction paper to glue onto the fish. We glued the construction paper onto the fish, overlapping the previous piece of construction paper to create the collage. We reviewed primary and secondary colors and were to identify which of the colors we used in our fish. After that, we were allowed to decorate the fish with sequins, tin foil, and glitter. I decided to create a rainbow fish. I used all the colors of the rainbow and then used a sequin for the eye, tin foil on the tail, and then glitter throughout the body.

For an extension activity, I would have my students create an ocean theme and place their fish in the ocean on a bulletin board. They could then create a story of how their fish helped other fish in the ocean, just like Rainbow Fish did. They could work together on their stories and create one big class story of how their fish would be a helpful fish in the ocean. We would then place the story up with the fish for everyone to see.

Project #7 Pebble Painting

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The second peer lesson was presented by Ms. Wiekamp and Ms. Trautner and they taught Pebble Painting. They started out the lesson by reviewing the story, “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.” I really enjoy that book! We then took our shoe boxes and placed a construction sheet of paper on the bottom of it. We chose between 3 different pebbles to paint with; small, medium, and large. I chose the medium pebble first and dipped it into red paint. I then placed the pebble in the shoebox, closed the shoebox, and then shook it so that paint covered the entire piece of construction paper. When I was done, there were different shapes on my paper. I then moved to the next station and chose a small pebble and placed it in yellow paint. I did the same thing that I did with the first pebble and then moved onto the next station where I continued on with the same procedure with using a large pebble in blue paint. We used all three primary colors and then we were to mix two of the primary colors to create a secondary color using the pebbles as well. I mixed blue and red together and created purple. I then mixed yellow and blue to make green. We then traced shapes and cut them out to trace onto our papers that were speckled with paint from the pebbles. I made a triangle, diamond, square, rectangle and a circle. I then pasted each of these shapes onto a big construction paper.

An extension activity that I would have my students do with this project is to create pictures using the shapes. For example, they could use the square to make a house, a triangle to make the roof for the house, and the circle as a sun. They could also experiment with other shaped pebbles, sharp or round, and different colors of paint to create their pebble paintings.