Keeping Summer School "Groovy"

One of my favorite things in this world is tie dye.  I thank the Art of Ed for this lesson.

I loved it. The students loved it. 

I had some students make over 5 designs discovering something new each time.  

I did require each student to make me one that I could keep so we could have a groovy hallway display when school is back in session.  

It'll be rad.

Here's some of my summer tie dye! 

Clay Elephants

It just so happens that elephants are my favorite animal.  When I get the chance to do ANY kind of project where we can use the elephant as the subject, I get excited.  We learned about the two different types of elephants; African and Asian, we also looked at this prezi.  We made them step by step together creating the body using two pinch pots and putting them together then adding in all the parts after.  I gave students free reign on how they wanted to paint them.  Many students chose to take this project home for a Father's Day gift. 

Surrealism Dreams

We spent the first part of summer school talking all about Surrealism and dreams.  We watched a Brain Pop Video on Surrealism, read about Surrealism, Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali in this Scholastic Arts magazine.  After we had learned all about surrealism and how it can relate to dreams, students were given this prompt to write about "What's the strangest dream you have ever had?"  After spending some time writing  students created a self-portrait with their surreal dream serving as the background.  Students spent a lot of time translating their words to imagery, mixing colors, and using new watercolor techniques.  The inspiration for this lesson came from here.  I was in awe of the work these students did and wanted to at least try out a portion of this lesson.  

Teacher Example

Student's who finished early came up with a title for their artwork that correlated between their dream and painting.

Mixed Media Sea Horse Gelli Prints

This year I decided to teach summer school, only 15 schools days over a 3 week period.  It's shorter hours and much more lax than the regular school year.  So I said why not, I can always use the extra cash.  Lucky for me the name of the course is "Arts with a Twist." I only have about 45 4th and 5th students I see and I get to see them every single day!!!!  Kind of exciting right? means I'm used to seeing the students like once every two weeks.  

Any way I'm using the opportunity to experiment with some things I haven't been able to do and always wanted to try.  Seeing the smaller groups also gives me the luxury to do projects I would never be able to do with a larger group.

For our first project the class started by tearing newspaper and gluing it onto a white piece of paper.  We then used watered down white acrylic paint to whitewash of the the newspaper.  The next day we came back and drew a seahorse on the back (the opposite of the newspaper).  They cut out the seahorse silhouette, flipped it over to the newspaper side and drew on top to make the seahorse details.  Then using oil pastels, colored pencils, and/or crayons students colored in the seahorse.  My only instruction was to blend and overlap the colors in someway.  Any scraps were used to create seaweed.  

Have you ever heard of a Gelli plate? I had seen the idea of using gelatin for printmaking and became intrigued.  I did some investigating and ran across the Gelli Plate. I also saw the price tag....yikes! So I researched some more and found a way to make my own.  IT IS AWESOME.  We used stencils to print our underwater background.  I find the result quite stunning! What do you think?

Here are some detail shots of the texture the newspaper gives.  I also love that you can still see the text.

I love this big jello rectangle.