Gallon Goblins for Halloween

A couple of weeks ago 6 III was working on recycling the crayon stubs from the Art Room, but 6 IV had a different task: They had to create something using empty plastic gallons which used to hold paint and glue. First, they covered them in Papier-maché newspaper.

 

The following week they did it again but using white paper so they could paint over them.

When they had dried, I left it up to them to design their own creations. I showed them some ideas from the internet for inspiration. Since Halloween was coming up, they all decided to make these little monsters, jack-o-lanterns or goblins. Super cute! Some used them for trick-or-treating and others were borrowed as decorations for the Halloween Fair at school.

Recycled Crayons

In the Art Room we had tons of tiny crayon stubs which were too uncomfortable to color with, but it seemed very wasteful to just throw them away. Since this month the school is working on recycling projects, 6 III was the lucky class who got to make these cute crayon-cakes (not edible though!).

First, students worked hard sorting out and peeling the labels off of all the stubs from dozens of boxes. I have no idea why, but they actually found this a lot of fun!

Afterwards, the restaurant lent us muffin pans and each student filled a foil cup with their color combinations. We disscussed previously which colors worked well together and how it might turn brown if too many different colors were added. When the pan was full, we took it up to the restaurant where they "baked*" them for us.

The next day, after they had cooled and set, everyone got theirs. Super cool!

* Basically, they have to melt in an oven for about 8 minutes. Another way of doing this is to melt them in a container and then pour onto molds with shapes. I´m trying to get some chocolate molds for the next edition of this project...

Matisse Cut-out collages

It´s so hard to choose student work to post. I have approximately 50 students per grade level, so every project gives me around that many works to choose from. Sometimes they´re all so wonderful i hate to leave some out, as is the case of the 6th Grade Matisse Cutout collages.

6th graders had been learning about the Elements of Art in during the first unit and were ready to put their knowledge into practice. I chose to showcase French artist Henri Matisse for them since they are studying Europe in their Social Studies classes. We started the unit by reading and disscussing his biography, and discovering why he developed his "painting with scissors" collage technique. Next, students had to create their own cut-out collages using construction paper as paint. They made their sketches with both organic and geometric shapes and distributed them on their canvases, sometimes overlapping, considering positive and negative space. The different sizes and colors created very interesting texture.

I wish i could post all their work because they are seriously wonderful, but the longest blog post ever. Here are a couple chosen at random so i wouldn´t feel biased ;-)