Dali's Bird Legged Elephants

Well, we're out of the gates running with fourth and fifth grade. We started with a two-part lesson inspired by Salvador Dali's Elephants:



 

We watched a hysterical video about Dali;

 

http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/1/10#most-recent

 



discussed his life and Surrealism, and drew two very long-legged elephants. The main idea I wanted the students to take from this lesson is that Surrealism takes real things and makes them impossible.

We used marker for the elephants, cut them out, used chalk pastels from the sunset and construction paper for the horizon line.

All in all, very successful and a little creepy...pretty much just like Salvador Dali!

 

 

 

 

 

Audubon's Flamingos

Kindergarten and First grade started off the year warming up their fingers with cutting and gluing. We took a look at John James Audubon's "Flamingo" from his Birds of America series.

 

 

We then cut and glued construction paper by using paper folding and crimping techniques (FINE MOTOR SKILLS-BAM!), talking about shapes (GEOMETRY-BAM!) and created a wonderful, silly-looking and very pink flamingo.

 



Welcome Back!

Welcome back to a wonderful year of learning!

My students came back refreshed and ready to create. Our first lesson was a simple self portrait...with a twist! We made COLLABORATIVE self portraits. The students shared talents with each other and worked together to make a drawing of each other. These should have come home to you last week.

My 2nd and 3rd graders continued with a lesson I've been dying to do for a while now. We looked at Klee's "Golden Fish,"

 

 

 

and started with an oil pastel background concentrating on line. Squiggly lines, zig zag lines, dotted lines were used to decorate around the edges of the paper.

Then, using a Japanese printmaking technique called, Gyotaku, the students painted and printed a rubber fish on the center of the paper.

Oil pastels were then used to enhance the print and finish up the work.

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty cool, huh?