THANKSGIVING STUDIES

Last Wednesday the 4's group learned about how the Native Americans were helpful to the Pilgrims by bringing food and sharing the feast on that first Thanksgiving meal. We decided to celebrate that new friendship by creating Native American paper bag vests decorated with real symbols and designs. It was a lot of fun to create them, and even more fun wearing them!

                              Fall 2013 Projects With Paint

                                                                                                       

Our first project in September was a circle study. I like this idea because it reminds me of stained glass windows in a church. We used yogurt cups dipped in black tempura, then filled in the circles with water colors. I like the randomness of this project. When put all together, the results were stunning.

 

One day, I did a little experiment with music and painting. A friend of mine told me about a composer that used mostly synthesized or electronic instruments. The music did evoke imagery, at least to me, but I wanted to see what the children came up with when they listened to it with a paintbrush in hand. I really was not surprised at the results. Three quarters of the class painted about water!! Which happened to also be what the music made me think of. Here are a few of the pieces created by student artists.

   

Another beautiful Fall project was leaf garlands. We painted leaf shapes on coffee filters using water colors. I really love the colors the students used. I made the whole palette available for this one because, really, all colors are found in nature. And the garlands are meant to be the students' interpretation of Fall colors. In this way they are both concrete and abstract.

For Halloween we learned that yellow tempura mixed with red tempura can make ORANGE!
Mixing the colors was half the fun. Each student mixed different proportions of red and yellow to get their desired color of orange for this project. They painted one sheet of white construction paper. When it was dry, they drew a circle free-hand, then cut it out. Add some eyes, mouth, teeth, stem and grass and wa-la! Jack-O-Lanterns! They were as individual as the children themselves.