Kindergarten line sculptures

The kindergarten curriculum for this 9 weeks calls for a paper sculpture... which is a perfect time to review lines. The students learned how to make all kinds of lines and glued them to a base. They were so pleased with them, and begged me to let them take them home right then. Of course I let them (I didn't tell them that I didn't have room to store them...hee hee).

Cheekwood Topiaries!

One of the classes I taught this summer at Cheekwood was a class called Wild World of Art for 10-12 year olds. I had a great class, and they worked really hard this week. One of their favorite projects was the topiary project that I found on the Dick Blick website. We used a wire mesh and wire to sculpt the form of the topiary. Next, the students glued squares of tissue paper to the wire form. When the form is covered with tissue paper, plaster was poured into terra cotta pots and a wooden dowel rod was placed into the plaster before it had set. Using wire and hot glue, the tissue paper covered form was attached to the dowel rod (after plaster set of course) and brown string is then wrapped around the dowel in order to simulate wood bark. When we were finished, the students were able to take their topiaries outside and choose a place in the gardens at Cheekwood to "install" their topiaries, and take pictures.

http://www.dickblick.com/lesson-plans/tissue-topiary/

Paper Coil Sculptures

This is one of the projects that a second grade class completed for the school's art show. We started off by creating a very shallow "box" or "tray" from a piece of black construction paper. I gave them a 12" square piece of black construction paper and showed them how to cut the corners and fold it up to create the box. Then I gave them 1/2" wide strips of paper to create walls within the box. I taught them to fold the ends over and glue the folded ends to the sides of the box. Then we raided the scrap paper box. I demonstrated to the students how to cut strips of various widths of paper and curl them around a pencil or crayon. Then the edge of the coils are dipped into glue and the coil is placed within the box. Each separate area created by the walls in the box is filled in with a different color.