End of the Year Paper Sculptures

The last few weeks of the school year are in full swing. All 400ish portfolios are handed back which means one day-no grade-"Take it with you please!"-projects are happening all over the place.

THIS is my favorite. Any class that was caught up and had a day or so left with me are making these wicked awesome paper sculptures. HUGE thanks to the ever brilliant shine brite zamorano for the inspiration via this post from pinterest.

These were done with a variety of K-4 classes and were incredibly open ended. I made the video below (Sorry I don't do sound!) to show them some of the basics and just "required" them to do two pieces of paper as the base. The two paper rule was to give it a little weight so they wouldn't lift when they started gluing. Everything else they did was up to them. Most students went abstract but I had a few do playgrounds, roller coasters, houses, and masks.

The only two negatives were the prep of cutting all the paper and having K & 1-ers wanting to do the cylinder and having difficulty gluing it down with enough glue to keep it on. There was a lot of end of the world tears when that happened.

My FAVORITE thing that happened was no one asking to do free art in my 3 & 4 classes because they were so completely engaged (which says a lot for the last 3 weeks of school).

HIGHLY recommend this as an end of the year project, if you have any paper left that is!

Big! Vertical! Snowmen! (2015)

Great news! This is the last winter project I have to share with you. Hopefully that actually means we will finally get spring around here! I created these with Kindergarten and 1st but it would be a great way to explore using paper in a 3 dimensional way with slightly older kids.

I have done this project previously and written about it here and here. But I changed it up this year with materials and adding another concept.

I Can create a vertical snowman that takes up most of my paper.
I Can add something 3D to my snowman.
I Can tell you what 3D means.

Day 1: Kicked off with one of my favorite books called Snowmen All Year (it comes from a series of other beautifully illustrated snowmen books).

Then we got into the same discussion as usual with this project about vertical vs horizontal. To reinforce, I had a variety of images and flipped through them and they had to show me with their arm if they thought the subject of the image was vertical or horizontal. This was really fun and silly. Especially because I tried to find some more creative images like this one...

After my demo video they were ready to work. They drew the snowman with a white crayon first then filled it in with white tempera.

Keep in mind these are pretty big each one is 1/3 of a piece of poster board....

Day 2: Instead of a story we watched one of my FAVORITE animations and talked about what the animation was trying to teach us...

Then we dived into talking about 2D vs 3D. Both the concept of vertical vs horizontal and 2D vs 3D is easy for the littles to understand but remembering the vocabulary always seems to stump them. After my video demo and them watching me make a cup for my snowmen only like 100 times they got to work!

Day 3: A little more work time was needed for a good chunk of students but not an entire class.

I did a little experimenting this time with giving some extra supplies like oil pastels and funky scissors to some classes but not all. If I do this project again I think I will give more choice in materials and allow for any combination of them. 

Mondrian Inspired Cubes!

One of the perks of teaching a lesson the first time is that you can use student suggestions and input to make it way better than you intended. I luckily have a great batch of 5th graders that start my rotation out to give me really great input!

I love Mondrian, no matter how boring some people might think his work is, I see such beauty and simplicity in the basic primaries. I just can't resist sharing Mondrian and his work with my students but I do like to mix it up ergo the cubes. I did the project below with my 2nd graders and Mondrian last year.

Day 1: Intro to Mondrian. I give them a little background info about him and then we watch this seriously amazing animation of his work on YouTube.

We look carefully at a few of his works and then I introduce the project by talking about cube vs. square. The rest of the class is spent creating their template for their cube by tracing pre-cut 4x4 squares onto a 1/2 sheet of poster board and following this guide I made them :)

Day 2: Right away when they come in, I show them more SERIOUSLY awesome YouTube videos inspired by Mondrian.

The music isn't great for this one so I usually mute it...

They freak out over this one...

So here is the part where they changed my mind:

Originally on my example I only did traditional Mondrian (square/rectangles/black lines) and they were like "Lets do any geometric shapes or shapes with straight edges only." After pondering a moment I was like "THAT SOUNDS AWESOME" And tada!

Here are a few mid-process ones...

After 3-4 more work days these beautiful cubes were born and held together with tacky glue!

Hints for the cube:
I had pre-cut 6"x12" strips of each primary and 4"x12" black for them to use to limit paper waste.

Put them together last, they don't take up too much space week to week if you wait until the end

Score all of the edges and tabs with a ruler before working on the designs and re score right before putting it together... makes things A LOT easier.

Check out these stunning works! By the way, I was inspired by this everywhere on Pinterest post for this project...

Jefferson Elementary...

McDill Elementary...

2D and 3D Monsters! (Part 2)

Remember when I did that first set of monsters? Well these were started at the same time and finally finished after getting kiddos caught up!

This is the second time I have done this project. The first time was during my long term subbing and with 1st graders. Having now done it with 2nd grade, I think the little bit older group was a better choice.

Day 1, I started with reading Jeepers Creepers A Monstrous ABC and talked about what it meant to be original and unique. Then we brainstormed with a web all of the different ways monsters could look or things they could have. Then students drew what they wanted their monsters to look like and the colors they wanted to use.

Day 2, We read one of my favorite books Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli  as inspiration for our setting for our monsters, a city! Then students did a watercolor crayon resist of the city.

Day 3, Monster construction started with a demo of looking at my sketch and figuring out how to turn my drawing into the construction paper collage monster. Students had to use at least 15 pieces of paper and when they were finished, no pencil lines showing. This was the part of the project that was a lot more successful then when I did it with 1st graders. Translating mediums is a lot more difficult for 1st than it was for 2nd.

Day 4, Students finished constructing and added the sentence talking about what their monster liked to eat. I had them paint a tube that was the same color as their monster without telling them what it was for. This got them excited and made it a lot easier to start the 3D process the next class.

Day 5, I introduced the concept of 2D and 3D. One of the most common responses I get when asking students if they know what 3D is, is 3D movies. This is a good jumping off point because we talk about how it looks like you can touch things in the movie. I introduce further by having an object that matched a drawing somewhere in the room. Then I demo how to translate my 2D monster into 3D and the kiddos get to work. I did have students work from pictures of their monster rather than their actual project to keep their 2D monsters glue and paint free.

Day 6, One last work day and most were done!

And I'm proud to say no Pinterest was used in creating the 2D lesson/project! However, the 3D was inspired by this one!

Kennedy Elementary...

This huge case is right in the entry way at our school. I've been dying waiting to have something to put in it! LOVE IT.

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

This is the only display case I have... which really bums me out!