This week, on my podcast Everyday Art Room, I'll be sharing my favorite sculpture projects, materials and supplies. Since so much of what I'll be talking about is visual, I thought I'd also put it all together in this here blog post. Please be sure to click the highlighted links as those provide the full lesson and, oftentimes, a video lesson! Before diving in, I thought I'd share my favorite supplies to hoard for sculpture. Here's my Top Ten: 1. Toilet paper tubes! Just send out an email and you'll get more than you'll ever need. 2. SCHOOL paper towel tubes! The paper towel tubes at my school are super sturdy and thick and are my fave for sculpture. 3. Packing supplies! Packing peanuts (a rarity these days which is for the best) and what I call "packing pillows" are my favorites for sculpture. 4. Cereal Boxes! They are also great for when you run out of paper...they are the perfect weight to withstand paint. 5. Cardboard! Visit your school cafeteria manager and ask her what she often disposes of. Cans, cardboard, boxes...all of these items are perfect for sculpture. 6. Restaurant supplies! Okay, now I don't want no trash brought into my art room so I never take used items, especially ones that have held food. BUT if you visit your local restaurant supply, you'll find so many great items for sculpture. 7. Aluminum foil! Dollar Tree sells aluminum foil by the sheets and it's the perfect size for the sculptures we create in my art room. 8. Egg cartons! You probably already collect these for paint...but they are also perfect for plaster molds (for candy! Scroll down!) and sculpture armatures. 9. Chopsticks! I love chopsticks or skewer sticks. We use them a ton in my art room. 10. Containers! My husband rinses out and saves nearly every lid (perfect circles!) and container we use for my art room. It may drive me bonkers but we use them all! Now, I know what you're thinking: Stephens! I don't have the storage space for all that! To which I say, that's why you do this sort of craziness at the end of the year. Hoard it, bust it out and then send it all home. What you don't use, toss them in grab bags and let the kids create on their own at home.
The following is a much shorter list of my favorite sculpture materials: 1. Activa Products Rigid Wrap. I LOVE plaster wrap for sculpture. It has replaced papier mache in my room. It dries super fast and leaves the sculptures rock hard. The only draw back is the price, it's not cheap. But it's my go-to and the kids love it. 2. Art Paste. If you GOTTA use papier mache (maybe you love it!) then I recommend Art Paste. It's great stuff. 3. Activa Products Celluclay. If you don't have a kiln, this stuff is great. It isn't like real clay...it's more like a paper pulp clay. You do have to mix it up (I don't recommend having kids do it) and it can be dusty...but I love the stuff. 4. Model Magic. No prep, just open an pack and go. It's not cheap so we use this sparingly. Okay! Now that we have that covered, let's talk projects!
1. Paper Sculpture! Paper sculpture is a project I do with my kindergarten kiddos on their very first days in art class...and every year THEY ROCK IT. This year, I did it with the entire school as apart of a project I called Getting to Know You Sculptures.
2. Pipe Cleaner and Recycled Sculptures! This is another project that I do with my kindergarten friends. We use insulation foam, pipe cleaners, packing peanuts and, this year we'll be adding cardboard squares to the mix. You can read all about it here.
3. TP Tube Pencils! Need a QUICK sculpture project that is a sure fire hit with your kids? Last year my FIRST GRADERS made these and loved it! They are made with TP tubes, snow cone paper cones (or tagboard rolled into a cone shape), aluminum foil and paint. All the details with video here!
4. Crayons and Crayon Boxes! Another kid fave, y'all, and so easy. In groups, the kids used cereal boxes for their crayon boxes. This was also a great way for them to explore color theory as they had to come up with their own custom crayon color. They also had to come up with a name for the color. More here.
5. Paint Tubes from TP Tubes! I think what some folks find daunting about sculpture is the notion that it has to be big and elaborate. You might have a small room, short class time and big classes...so manage your lessons around that. This lesson I think you and your students will love!
6. Spilled Glue Bottles! Do you see a theme here? One of our art show themes last year was "art supplies"...so that's where the inspiration for all of these came from. You can tour that portion of the art show here. Details on these bottles here!
7. Candy Hearts! These were so fun to make...while munching on candy hearts, of course. Created with tagboard and plaster wrap. The big box was painted by my early finishers, using a recycled box. All the details, with video, here.
9. Plaster Candy Hearts! My second graders are currently creating treasure boxes and they think it is the best thing ever. It reminded me of this project a couple years ago...my third grade had created these papier mache candy boxes with plaster candies. They had a BLAST! The candy was created from plaster poured into a variety of molds like egg cartons and ice cube trays. For more info, visit here.
10. Taxidermy Creatures! This lessons has yet to be tested on my students but I've shared it in many workshops and it's a hit. Those teachers have in turn done it with their kids with great success. Just a little foil, Celluclay and imagination for this one.
Completed kindergarten masterpieces. That's right, I said kindergarten. The under-6 set is knockin' it outta the park, er, art room so far this year and I couldn't be more thrilled.
What I'm about to present to you right here is one Big Fat Hairy kindergarten unit on line. And color. Oh, and shape, sculpture and good craftsmanship, i.e. how-not-to-drive-the-art-teacher-crazy(-er)-by-not-grinding-your-paintbrush-into-the-paper. Because she no like-y. And, in my art room, keeping me sane-ish is at the top of my Learning Targets. Which is way harder than you could ever imagine. Just ask the kids.
Do you recall those wild and wacky paintings created on the first days of school in this post? Those large paintings have come in very handy as backdrops for our displays as you can see here.
Without getting into all of that, let's chat about the aforementioned Line Unit, shall we? I'm not gonna lie, I do this same ole project with kindergarten at the beginning of every year. Which is unusual for me because with all the other grade levels, I love to change things up. Not so with kinder'town for a coupla reasons: A. they love it; B. it covers a whole batch o' skills/techniques/vocabulary/routines and C. let's be honest, coming up with projects that the little ones can master is not my forte. So when I find something that works, I stick with it.
So on our very first day of art, after introducing ourselves to one another and an abbreviated discussion of rules and consequences (because, after all, these kids are five. They still have baby fluff, suck their thumbs and wet their pants routinely. Rules and consequences mean nada. A wicked stare and a "we don't do that in kindergarten" usually does the trick), I like to dive head first into the art-making swimmin' hole. Which means we create our very first sculpture.
Now if you're an old warhorse at this art teacher game, this lesson is nothing new to you. You might wanna skip on down to the bottom where I discuss such things as pinwheel portrait painting and bottomless basket weaving (don't worry newbies, they'll be gone a while. I don't even know what that stuff is!). For the rest of ya, lemme tell you how I go about teaching this line sculpture lesson:
First of all, we have a little chat about the difference between flat two-dimensional artwork and sculptures. After looking at some images of sculptures, we chat about the ones we are familiar with (ole Lady Liberty almost always comes up) and discuss how a sculpture is something we can see (rotating body at waist for emphasis) all...the way...around.
I then tell 'em that we are going to create a sculpture with a bunch of straight lines (strips of paper cut 1" X 9" but sizes can vary). I ask them how to make a flat piece of paper pop out of their sculpture base(aka the bottom paper)to which they usually answer "glue!" It's at this point that I tell 'em that if they want their sculpture to stand, just like us, it must have feet.
I demonstrate creating a small fold at the ends of the strip of paper thus creating feet. It's there that glue is applied (to which the strip of paper always responds, "oohh, that tickles my feet! Ohhh, that glue is soo cold!" Yes, the paper talks to us. It's kindergarten, people. They eat this stuff up). Once the glue is applied, I show the kids how to hold the paper in place on the base for about 10 seconds.
From there, I demonstrate adding more paper strips to the sculpture base on top, below, behind or beside the first strip. Then I turn the kids loose on their on sculptures.
The following art class, I introduce more lines. I demonstrate folding a zigzag line, wrapping a strip of paper around my pencil to create a spiral and creating a loop de loop.
I also chat about how lines create shapes and demonstrate creating a circle by gluing one end of the strip to the other. With that circle, so many other shapes can be created with a pinch. Pinch the circle once and you have a teardrop! Pinch it again and you have an ellipse! One more time, it's a triangle! Anther pinch and you have a square.
From there, the kids go nuts on their sculptures creating lines, shapes and whatever else they can dream up.
Here! Lemme walk you through it.
On the third day of art class, I get real serious about the whole line thing. We look at each of these snake-y lines on the poster I created way back in first-year-art-teacher-land and then locate them on works of art. Any ole Kandinsky works great for this. It's at this point I introduce to the kids a lil poem I wrote some years ago about a snake named Larry that can morph his body into any line he likes. It goes a lil sumpin like this (complete with hand motions, you better believe it!):
Larry the Line
Is a friend of mine
(creating a snake by opening the fingers of your hand, puppet style and there's your snake!)
He can make three
(hold up a three with your fingers)
Straight lines for me!
Ver-tickle
(create a vertical line with your forearm)
Diagonal and horizontal!
(pantomime each)
Any curve, he can learn
With a twist and a turn.
When he's out of his tangle
he makes a great...angle.
(created by placing your hand on your hip and pointing to your elbow)
Any line, he can make
After all, he's a snake!
After learning the Larry the Line poem, I bust out this huge cheesey carnival snake I got years ago that happens to have a little rattle in his tail. I convince the kids that he's real (they're kindergarten so they totally buy it) and maneuver him around to create a variety of lines. If the kids guess the name of the line correctly, I let them "rattle" Larry's tail. They eat it up and learn the names of lines to boot.
After that, I give a little demo on painting. If you've read this blog for five minutes, you know that when painting, I liken the bristles of the paint brush to a ballerina: It always dances on it's toes, it never scoots around on it's bottom. After I demonstrate painting each of Larry's lines, the kids go to their seats and we do a little guided painting. Meaning, I paint and they follow along.
This school year, I have my kindergarten for 45 minutes every six days (which is different than my usual 30 minute classes, twice every six days...confused yet? That makes two of us). That slightly longer block of time makes a world of a difference in that we can accomplish so much! On the fourth day of this unit, we examine Kandinsky again and this time chat about how influenced he was by music. The kids were told that they were going to be painting a nonobjective picture of lines while listening to Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. If you're not familiar, this piece of music introduces each character of Peter and the Wolf with a different instrument. Each character really comes to life with the music and makes for great line paintings.
On that day, the children were only given black paint. As they painted to the music, you could see them trying to capture each character in line. Once a painting was finished, I'd take it from them and hand them a new sheet of white paper. By the end of art class, each child had painted about three black and white line pictures.
The following art class, I introduced the kids to tempra cakes which you can see best a coupla photos ago. My focus was on using the art materials properly and exploration of color. I wrote about this particular painting lesson pretty extensively last year in this blog post. In that lesson, we didn't paint to music and we focused some on pattern in a follow up lesson.
Here's a collection of their finished pieces. I love how wild, bright and unique each one is, just like the artists themselves.
On the sixth and final day of this unit, the kids were introduced to Roy G. Biv and watercolor paint. Since the last lesson had just been about exploring with color and proper use of painting supplies, I really wanted to focus on the order of the colors in the rainbow. My hat helped them remember the order (even if it is missing the "B" in Roy G. Biv) as did the large rainbow I have mounted on my easel. And in case you're dying to get a rainbow hat of your own, mine is from amazon. Yes, really.
Have you read this book? I picked it up years ago at the thrift store and it's pretty cute. As you turn each page, an additional color of ribbon is added to the ribbon rainbow in the book, hence the "Magic Ribbon Book" label at the bottom.
After that chat, I demonstrate to the children how to use watercolor paints. This is an easy transition from the tempra cakes as the cleaning-your-brush-before-getting-another-color is exactly the same. We do chat about the differences between the two mediums (you know, watercolor being more translucent) and also discuss painting in Roy G. Biv order. After that demo, the kids returned to their seats with their paintings created on that third day of art class and rainbow-ize the thing. This is the first year I've added this portion to the line unit and I love the result.
And there you have it. One Big Fat Hairy line/shape/color/RoyG.Biv/sculpture/abstract Unit for the wee ones. I know these lessons are nothing new...so I'd love to hear how you approach teaching line. Also, for the sake of space, I may have not answered all of your how-you-teach-that questions, so feel free to email me or leave a comment. I may or may not get back to you. Just sayin'.
GOING LIVE TONIGHT, JANUARY 4TH AT 8PM CST RIGHT HERE. We'll be chatting about What We Wish We Knew our first year(s) teaching. Chat soon! Until then... How about a fun heart sculpture project where kids discover an artist and use them as their inspiration? That's exactly what I had in mind when I came up with this simple and effective project using papier mache pulp and plaster! My buddy Natalie Waggenspack over at smART Class (one of my favorite art teacherin' blogs!) inspired this lesson. Here is the process video with an introduction to the artists I found inspiring:
Originally I was calling this project the Jim Dine Hearts Sculpture...but I didn't want my artists to feel limited to one artist. Shoot, they don't even have to use an artist's style as their inspo, they can come up with their own. But if you are looking for a project where your students do a little bit of artist investigation, I think this would be super fun.
I think this project would best be suited for students from third grade on up. I'll be doing the Candy Heart Sculpture with my fourth graders so I might either reserve this lesson for next your or try it with my younger kids. Here are the supplies needed: * Aluminum foil. I really liked using the sheets of foil as they were precut and just the right size. * Activa Product's Celluclay or Fast Mache. Both are very similar and work great. If I were doing this with my kids, I would definitely premix the clay. * Activa Product's Rigid Wrap Plaster. Used for the wings. * Tempra or acrylic paint.
I love the work of contemporary artist Chris Uphues (I know my students will as well...check out his street art, so fun!) and he inspired this heart.
And I had Frida in mind when I painted this heart. I really loved creating these hearts and see so much potential with this project.
Love to hear from you if you give this project a try! Don't feel limited to the sculpture supplies I used. I really think a variety of mediums could be used to create these fun hearts. Full disclosure: Activa Products and I are working together to create fun projects with their products. I received these sculpture supplies from them. Thank you, Activa Products!
Well, hello lovies! In this blog post, I thought I'd share with you 14 of my very favorite Valentine's Day inspired lessons...perfect for these chilly and cold months. Let's let warm fuzzies abound in the art room!
To find the lessons, just follow the link. Many of them have a video to share with your kids. Also...several of them are sub plan videos! Perfect if you have to take a day. I know I could use one.
Next up are these amazing LOVE prints created by my first graders. We chatted about Robert Indiana before diving into these. We had a whole lotta printmaking fun with this one. Last year, I did this lesson with my second graders. They were able to choose their own "kind" four letter word (we had: nice, kind, love, glow, hope, good, etc.) and used strips of paper to create the letters. Those turned out so fun.
Chris Uphues is one of my very favorite contemporary artists to share with my kids because 1. he's the nicest and 2. his artwork speaks to them. It's so happy! My students adored this lesson a couple years ago!
If you need a quick one-day lesson that will introduce your kids to a new artist, you might want to try this one on for size. It's inspired by J. Goldcrown and all you need is black paper and chalk for amazing results.
This lesson is similar to the first I shared except that there are wings added with plaster. I'm thinking of doing this lesson with my third graders super soon...just need to work out the specifics...but I'm sure they will love it. Video details and more here.
Need a sub plan? I did this Romero Britto inspired collaborative with my kids when I was out on jury duty. Lesson and video right here.
Need something big and happy to spread the love? My kids EACH contributed to the Our School has Heart mural. Visit this post to see what each different grade level created for this mural from embroidery to painting to sculpture and needle felting!
My fourth graders tackled this lesson a couple years ago right after they finished the following sculpture lesson...
This lesson I created a little while back for my kindergarten and first graders. We loved the printed hearts and the fun guided drawing animals. Video lessons for each critter.
Oh! And if you are looking for something to do with your faculty and staff to bring the love, you might want to check out these our Clay Hearts with Wings...a huge hit with my coworkers. Video too!
Okay, y'all...that was WAY more than 14 projects so have fun!
