One of the assignments I had at RISD was to make jewelry only using books. It was a fun project so I did a similar variation using magazine paper. I ripped a bunch of paper by color and demonstrated basic shapes, like the coil and fan. Some students expanded on those while others created totally different designs. I can definitely see these on the runway!
Students painted a fish bowl in the colorfully patterned style of French painter, Henri Matisse. Oreo, the class fish, was our muse:)
One of the Upper Elementary students was really inspired by Middle School's landscape drawings and asked me if they could do the lesson too. I love it when students get inspired by each other! Rather than doing the same lesson, I had UE paint Van Gogh's self-portraits. We looked at many of his self-portraits and discussed how he used color and texture in his work. After sketching the face together, I demonstrated how to layer stroke after stroke the way Van Gogh did. Small details like using the round brush instead of the flat brush was really important in this lesson. It's great seeing students carefully choose various sized brushes to achieve different strokes (putting them in a utensil tray is an effective way to organize them btw!)
MS students made lovely paper cranes for the children of Japan who were victims of the tsunami/earthquake. OshKosh is donating clothing for every crane that gets sent to them.
This was a collaborative mural painted by all grade levels. You can read more information about the idea here.
