Cave paintings DONE

Well. The hunks of cave 'rock' are dry and painted. We used a combination of school acrylics, and charcoal. The caves are closed up for another year, the flashlights are turned off, and the students are ready to return to the 21st century.

Today, the students each made a 'signature' with their hand on a large sheet of brown Kraft paper, either by stamping it, or sponging around it for a stenciled look.

The hand-printed Kraft paper was used as the background for the bulletin board. Here it is, all together!

Making our hunks of cave wall

This is our 'glop'- shredded paper, moistened w/water, and then saturated with dog drool (Art Paste) and an added hit of Elmer's Glue-All.

I gave a big handful of glop to each 4th grader, and for the next half hour, while we took a virtual tour of the Lascaux cave and looked at images from Chauvet as well, they pounded, twisted, kneaded, and 'worked' the glop into paper clay. And YES, they are doing it DIRECTLY on the table surface. With several minutes left, they each flattened their glop into a big pancake, and inserted a paper clip in the top for hanging. Once they were put away for drying, they used scrubbers and sponges and gave the tables a good cleaning.

We made them rather large this year, and I'm not sure they would have dried fast enough, but it has been - GASP - 80 degrees outside! My classroom windows open onto a flat roof covered with stones. The sun has been bright and the roof is hot enough to fry an egg, and so I leaned out the windows and set the hunks of cave wall on the rocks to dry in the sun.

It's so warm that things are blooming way earlier than usual, and the robins are outside chirping. It feels like July, but there are still 3 months of school left. I think it is making the kids a little wacky.


Tomorrow my fourth graders head into the caves. Hopefully that will take their minds off the summer weather outside. Meanwhile, construction of the teddy bear chairs is complete and 2nd graders are ready to start painting them, and my 3rd graders are about to begin the papier-mache on their garden gnomes. Busy busy busy!
Like a house of cards! Don't dare move a chair.

My art room is like a cat hospital

A cat hospital filled with unfinished kitties - waiting for whiskers and noses,
eyes, and some patterns, and a little TLC.
It's kind of like Edward Scissorhands - their Creators have gone home for the weekend and left them incomplete, banding together to fend for themselves against the elements. Poor kitties.

Or maybe just waiting for a pat on the head or a rub on the tummy.
But this one is not made out of papier-mache.

And now for a little more art room crazies - here's the next step with that shredded paper I showed you. We are mixing it with papier-mache goo ("dog drool") till the paper breaks down and becomes clay-like. Fun, fun, fun....

And a tower of teddy bear chairs in-progress obliterating my word wall. On Monday 2nd graders will complete their construction so we can begin painting them later in the week.

And then, today, Saturday, I poured OJ and milk at our annual Teachers Association sponsored free community pancake breakfast, and then helped direct kids to transform an old flat into something useable for the grade 5-8 musical production of Cinderella, coming soon. I'll add something that looks like framing on the window when the stones are dry. The kids did a good job, but boy oh boy, the kids looked like a mess when they were done!

Cave paintings - DONE!

I must be blogoholic because I've been posting a LOT lately. But it seems like a bunch of artwork got done at once, and I wanted to get these photos off my camera and onto the computer, so this was a natural next-step.

These are "cave" paintings by my 4th graders, painted while sitting or lying on the floor in the dark under the tables, closed in by cardboard walls, working by the light of flashlights (as I showed in a prior post). Some of the paintings did not come out so great, probably because the kids couldn't see what the heck they were doing. Also, the surface of some of the "rocks" were a bit rough, if the student didn't knead his hunk of recycled paper glop enough before forming a patty. Anyhow, these individual photos are some of the BETTER pieces.

But no matter how the product LOOKS - I also had some kids tell me today that these were the BEST art classes of their life (though another child disputed that making a papier-mache tiki last year was pretty awesome too).

All I know is, changing the art room environment took a bit of time, effort, and planning to set up, but totally worth it. The kids think their work is great and will remember this project.
-

Below is the entire bulletin board display. The handprints were done by the kids on brown paper hung on the wall. We were going to spray (stencil) some hands also, but my spray bottle kept clogging and dripping and we gave up on it and stuck to stamping the hands.

Into the Caves! by 4th grade

These are samples of 4th grade cave paintings on "rock" (no, it is not traditional clay - read on to find out the crazy material we used). Students did their artwork after learning about the paintings in Lascaux and other caves painted over 15,000 years ago.

• First, we brainstormed about the possible materials that would have been used, since there was no Wal-Mart 17,000 years ago to buy art supplies! And we discussed possible reasons for prehistoric man to have created these greart works of art.
• Then, we created our own hunks of cave wall for our artwork.
• To prepare in advance of this lesson, I gathered bags of shredded paper from the school office, and poured in some hot water to soften it up. The next day, I mixed up a couple of batches of Art Paste (shown in the yellow box below), and poured a bunch into the bags of softened recycled paper. Some kids came in at lunchtime and were thrilled to be able to help squish the "dog drool" into the gloppy paper.

• When 4th grade art class time arrived, I handed each student a bundle of "glop", and as we discussed the story of Lascaux and brainstormed for ideas, each student continued to knead his lump, breaking down the paper so it became a textural claylike substance by the end of the class. Here's my hands demo-ing kneading the lump.




• Then, each student "patty-caked" their lump into a slab of rock wall. Before putting it away to dry, students inserted a paper clip into the top to serve as a hanger.
• Now for the big adventure! Students had looked at animal pictures and prepared drawings in advance of "entering the caves".
• When they arrived for art class, they found the tables either draped with fabric or blocked off with large sheets of cardboard. Their paper clay had dried out and was rock solid and virtually unbreakable.
• The lights were dimmed, a CD with the sounds of wolves, rain, and other natural sounds was turned on, and students took their needed materials into their caves (under the tables). They used pieces of vine charcoal to draw, and I provided various neutral colors of paint. Paint was brought into the caves by placing small dips of colors on sheets of scrap paper, which also became mixing palettes.

• Some students preferred the solitude of their own corner of a cave, while others chose to crowd into a cave together. Some used flashlights as torches, and others occasionally emerged from the cave to check out their color choices. The kids were thrilled. You would have thought that I gave them the best present ever, and not just the opportunity to sit on the uncomfortable floor under a table!

• After the rock was painted, the kids also had the opportunity to either stamp or stencil their hand on a sheet of brown Kraft paper, which became the backing paper on a bulletin board. The 4th graders are very proud of their "prehistoric" cave paintings.