looping and pinching

The 2nd grade classes have been creating paper sculptures this week. I wanted to show them how they could take something flat and manipulate it into something 3d. The project was inspired by the work of the Ave Studio in Uruguay and a project the Texas Art Teacher did a couple years ago with her students.

 Ave Studio

Texas Art Teacher project

 

I shared a few pieces that were done by the Ave Studio and talked about how they repeated one shape, a water drop, and created something that was much bigger and that had a 3d quality to it.

Students started out the project by making a medium and large flower shape and glued one on top of the other. We then made the cylinder center, followed by the "petals" or water drop shapes, and then put the whole thing together.

When making the cylinder I emphasized making a loop with the paper and making sure they overlapped one end of the paper with the other. In order to connect the cylinder to the flower, students cut slits into the bottom to make a series of tabs that could then get glued in place.

After the drop shapes were glued, I showed the kids how to attach them to the cylinder, other drops, and the flower. As the week has gone on, we have gotten more adventurous with how they can attach pieces to each other. One of the cool things about this project is the wide variety of finished pieces kids have been coming up with.

One thing that is very important is for the kids not to rush the gluing and pinching of their parts. Pieces can easily come unglued and pop off. I have them count a slow, quiet 10 while pinching pieces together. I also stress that they need to pinch from 2 sides. If they just press something together from one side, the glue will not hold and frustration can set in.

 I have been doing different color combos with each class, so when I save a few from each class the final install will have more variety. (You know how I roll with my installs;)

twistin and turnin.

This has been a fun one:)

The 4th grade classes needed a little extra time on their Shane Devries landscapes, so I wanted to do a low stress, high success project with the shorter time I had left this week.

Thank you Ms. Novak over at Organized Chaos! I recently came across a project she did with her students a while back and thought it would fit the bill perfectly. The project is to make a paper sculpture with warm and cool colors, one long cut, twist and turn the paper to create interesting loops and pop outs, and glue those pieces together.

I shared Ms. Novak's blog post and examples of her students' work with each class. I did this while some were finishing up with their previous project. My students had a hard time believing that "little" 2nd graders actually made the stunning examples they were looking at:)

I also very quickly shared a couple sculptures that Frank Stella made, so they could see how a "bigger" artist used the same concept of twisting and turning a shape to make something new and interesting.

When the students were ready to start, I shared 3 photos of my sample, so they could see how they would add warm colors to one side of a sheet of paper and cool colors to the other. I also showed them a photo of my continuous line on the warm side. With the last one, I emphasized that the line started on an edge and ended on a different spot inside the square and that no 2 parts of the line should touch each other.

Adding the warms and cools to the paper was simple enough. When it came to adding the continuous line,that's when some of the students had a little difficulty. Some made completely closed shapes, some made their line to simple. These students were able to modify their designs before cutting after discussing the issue with me.

I then modeled how they should "play" with their cut pieces to find interesting solutions to their sculpture problem. Once they tried out a few ways to shape it, they could then add glue to make parts stick to each other. Echoing the sentiments of Ms. Novak, I emphasized to the students that they couldn't really go wrong with this problem. As long as the sculpture didn't end up flat like a piece of paper, they were creating a 3d form.