Green Cities

In Art Through Children's Literature we read The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton.  In this Caldecott Medal Winning storybook, a little house lives happily in the country.  Personification is used to express how the seasons come and go, delighting the little house.  One day a road and houses are built in the little house's countryside home.  Soon a whole city is constructed and the little house is upset by all the noise of trains, subways, cars, and bustling people.  She's disappointed by all the smoke that ruined her peaceful country home.

 After reading this story, we discussed how cities need to be built for future populations to live and visit.  We talked about some ways we can make this cities "greener" and came up with ideas for what future cities might look like.  Students came up with fabulous ideas, like underwater transportation, flying cars, and climate controlled biomes for people to live in so they don't have to travel to warmer places to vacation. 

Here's how we did it:

Une:  We drew our green cities on watercolor paper  with pencils (could jump right into black sharpies, but I wanted kids to spend the time making extraordinary details).  Imagination was encouraged and the use of groundlines, waterlines, buildings, transportation...etc was discussed.

Deux: I pulled out the tube watercolors, which I usually use with the older students, in various shades of green, yellow, and blue watercolors to paint them. I showed the students how to mix colors then dared them to create as many shades of green, turquoise, lime, chartreuse, aqua, and teal they could! 

Trois: Once dried completely, we finished these paintings by outlining all our lines in black sharpies. 

Eddie

Gaia

Victoria

Nicholas

Megan

Adric

Aidan

Chloe

Luke

Maddy

William

Yula

Fall Harvest Bean Mosaics!

In The Sights and Sounds of the Season we welcomed the fall harvest by paying homage to all the colorful foods that could be used to create mosaics. I began by explaining that the history of mosaic art goes back some 4,000 years or more.  The Greeks began using this technique by arranging pebbles in precise patterns to create scenes of people and animals.  Later in Italy, wall mosaics were made using "Tesserae," tiny glass and terracotta pieces, which were vivid and reflected light.  Students were also shown examples of Byzantine and Islamic mosaics, which decorated glorious mosques, temples, and other places of worship.


After a brief mosaic history, I showed the students some of the materials we were using to create our own mosaics. They took turns identifying the items, as we used common dried foods like split peas, black beans, pumpkin seeds, rice, navy beans, kidney beans, and more.  I even passed around a spice jar of Anise stars and had them use their little noses to make their best guess as to what common candy they smelled like (Licorice!). 

This project took two classes and used the following supplies:
6"x 6" matte board or cardboard square
various beans, seans, twigs...etc
Leaves
white glue
warm colored tempera paint
string
hot glue gun/sticks


First: Each student was given at 6"x 6" chipboard square.  I showed students some leaves and asked them to identify what tree they were from.  Most were common like oak, maple, and birch.  They then traced the leaves onto their board (some did one, others did 2 or 3, depending on leaf size)

Next: Students filled in one leaf at a time with glue and covered the leaf area with dark colored beans or seeds.  They repeated this step with the remaining leaves.  They used light colored seeds and rice to fill in the background area. 


In the next class: To introduce warm fall colors into this mosaic, we added craft stick frames for the border.  Lastly, using red, yellow, brown, and orange tempera paint, the artists painted the frames and any empty spaces of their chipboard.  We even attached a yarn string to make these mosaics hangable decorations! Some chose to go without a string and use them for trivets.


Here are some examples of our Fall Harvest Bean Mosaics!

 
























                Cullen





       

                 Chloe

         Aidan

  

      


















          Eddie



            Jack



                Gaia



          Karlee

           Jake
        

























                   Levi





                   Maddy

       Megan


























           Meredith



























         Seth





        Beth
                                               
                                           Miss Vanessa

                     

                         These looked so artsy while

                  they were drying on newspaper all in a row!

"If I Were A Tree"

Last week in Art Through Children's Literature we read the book "If I Were A Tree" by Dar Hosta .  Dar Hosta (prononced hoasta, with a long "o") is an award-winning collage artist who specializes in children's books. She combines unique papers, paints, pastels, metallics and other creative elements to show brilliant scenes and fantastic creatures that leap off the pages.  I am looking forward to introducing this class to more of her exciting and visually stimulating books.   Below are some examples of her tree art.

 

      Book Cover    Picture we used to inspire "Birch Trees" Art

     "Cobalt Tree Night"               "Owl's Tree"

After reading "If I Were A Tree" we focused on the line "If I were a tree, I would show you colorful leaves in the fall," which is illustrated with a warm colored birch tree. 

 We began our art by using watercolors to create a blue sky and green grass background for our tree to live in.  Next, using a smaller sheet of watercolor paper, we drew a tree with branches.  Some of the younger students traced their hands, transforming their fingers into branches. We cut these trees out and used black watercolors and toothbrushes to splatter on birch tree markings.  We glued our trees to our backgrounds so the trunk touched the ground. Lastly, we cut out leaves using warm colored construction paper and metallic paper and attached them to our branches.

Here are some examples of our "Fall Birch Trees"

              Victoria                                  Nicholas

             Adric                                              Aidan



        Jake                                          Yula

             

     

     Megan

*Some artwork did not have a name--if one of them is yours, please let me know!

Later during the day in The Sights and Sounds of the Seasons we celebrated the arrival of Autumn by learning more about collage art.  We collaborated to create a fall tree mural featuring cut paper, watercolor, and metallic elements.  First we applied a watercolor wash to a large paper background to create a sky.  Then I drew a big tree outline in a bold marker.  The children took turns covering the tree with glue and then using torn pieces of brown and gold papers to fill in the trunk and branches.  All students made leaves using a few different techniques.  We used washable markers on coffee filters and then spritzed them with water to diffuse the colors.  We also embellished cut paper leaves with markers and gold paint pens.

Here is the end result of all our hard work and collaboration!