The last of the Fauves - Texture Fauves!

I've been watching Hoarders on TV and decided I really needed to get rid of some of the junk in my storage closet at school. It seems everyone thinks I should have what they no longer need, so they leave bags at my door. Sigh...

Hence, this final (loosely) Matisse-related project, which was easy and so much fun. Second graders had learned about Matisse, and knew that the word fauve meant wild beast. So they created their own "texture fauves" out of various materials. We had fabric, corrugated cardboard, pieces of foam, ribbon and lace, pom poms, feathers, wiggle eyes, doilies, wood shapes, and toothpicks. I purposely showed them NO examples, so that they totally had to figure it out for themselves. I gave them bottles of Elmer's Glue-All, had them each select a scrap piece of mat board for background, and away they went!

The rules were simple:

1. Nothing sticking up off the board.
2. No blood or weapons
3. You had to be able to tell it was a beast or creature.
4. Students could only take one thing from the selection at a time, and had to return stuff the same way it was found (ribbon rolled up, feather bucket closed, etc)
5. Everything had to be glued down by counting to at least 10.

Sunday comic #4 & some Surreal-y good resources for teaching Surrealism!

(OK, it's still Saturday night as I post this, but we'll still call it a Sunday Comic...)
My Artist of the Month bulletin board currently highlights two Surreal artists for December: Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. My third graders will actually be creating paintings of surreal food to put on our very own Salvador Deli bulletin board! Melting hamburgers, flying pickles, ice cream sundaes with eyeballs on top... can't wait to see what they come up with!

Friday I introduced Surrealism, Dali, and Magritte to my 3rd graders by reading this book (one of my absolute faves), and as always, they LOVED it!

And for my 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, I've shown them the movie Get Surreal with Salvador Dali. I have a different project planned at each grade level. As for the movie, it's an absolutely WONDERFUL resource, available FREE to educators from the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Here's where to get it:

http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/education/for_educators.html

If you click on this link and scroll down, you'll find instructions for requesting your free copy of the DVD.

There's a great collage project in the movie that I adapt for my 4th graders. And time permitting (ha ha), students at various grades will play the drawing game "Exquisite Corpse" (which I call "Funny Foldies" with the younger kids). It's also mentioned in the movie. Busy busy busy!!