More of my sweet darlings have finished their Aztec Suns. I am loving the personalities that are shining (pun!) through:
Aztec pumpkin?
A lot of kiddos finished early, so I challenged them to imagine they were an Aztec living long ago, livin' life and lovin' the sunshine. I was very impressed with some of the resulting work, considering these are first graders:
I had plans to do some simple, textured, clay medallions with my first graders this year. But when it came time to do them, I couldn't get excited. I think they were screaming "kindergarten" a little too loudly. So I did what any desperate modern-day art teacher in a pinch would do. I pinned.
Among other bits of inspiration (here, here, and here) I found a picture of clay suns that was a Flickr tease--just a picture. But a picture's worth 1,000 words (in a blog post), right? I decided that my first graders and I would make some Aztec Suns with Model Magic! Hooray!
The Aztecs lived from the 14th through the 16th centuries in Mexico. They believed that life had undergone several creations, and that they were living in the fifth and final creation, each of which was represented by a sun.
The Aztec Sun Stone - http://www.crystalinks.com/aztecalendar.html
On the first day, I showed the kids some images of the Aztec Sun Stone, discovered in the 1700s, weighing in at 48,000 pounds and stretching 12 feet in diameter! Holy huge carving, Batman!
The kids got down and not-so-dirty with white Model Magic, which they flattened into pancakes and subsequently decorated with both additive and subtractive techniques.
The suns dried out (use wax paper underneath) until our next class, when we got out the paints and went to town! Unsurprisingly, the neon and metallic temperas were everyone's favorite.
As we finished this project, the weather went from winter chill to borderline summer temps. I have no problem taking credit for inspiring the sun to come out to play! :-)
When I was little, my grandmother bought for me a beautiful blue spotted parakeet, which I named Mimi. When my brother was old enough, he got a bird of his own. She was bright yellow, so he named her Butter! Ha!
Apparently today, April 8th, is Draw a Bird Day.
The DAB website has the story of DAB Day, which is quite touching. If you're like us Pennsylvanians, you're enjoying some warmer weather
(FINALLY!) and the chirping of our flighty friends. Celebrate their song (and the memories of Mimi and Butter) by
drawing a bird today! A few of my fifth graders spent a few minutes of their morning time to do just that:
When I saw gyotaku on Dali's Moustache, I knew that it HAD to be done! I have been looking forward to trying this project for months!
I opted to do this with my third graders--a moronic brave choice, considering how wild some of my third grade classes can be. But the appeal of working with fake rubbery fish won out over poor choices, and this ended up being a very successful project!
Very little introduction needs to be done for the kids to get excited about this project. I show them the following video to get them hyped!
For your reference, the above artist, Naoki, has a website with a lot of his gyotaku prints featured:
And the following video is pretty cool, too, and is set to some neat music!
After discussing the art of gyotaku, or "fish rubbing," I had the kids paint their background paper. I experimented with a few papers but ultimately prefer using watercolor paper, as it isn't terribly thick but still holds up to the weight of watercolors and tempera combined. Our paper was 8 x 18".
The kids were allowed to choose the palette they used for the watercolored background, as well as choose whether they wanted an abstract cloudy/blob look, or a more organized pattern.
This underpainting took a full 45-minute class, which was perfect to move us into the second day, the big printing extravaganza!
I fully took advantage of Ren's fantastic idea to have extra gyotaku assignments prepared for the kids who weren't printing (as we couldn't do all prints at once). Kiddos designed their own funky fish and personalized stamp design, as per the worksheet you can find on Dali's Moustache:
Some of my early finishers wrote a few facts about their fish. My favorites include:
"This is Elvis Fish. He wants me to say, 'thank you, thank you very much' for reading about him."
"My fish makes man prints. He won first place for his man printing."
The third graders were absolutely nuts for this project. And, as with their Trapeze Artists, all of the other grade levels were totally jealous! For just two 45-minute classes, I am thrilled with the work that the students produced! These precious smiles prove that I'm not the only happy one:
