Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture:Integrating Technology into the Arts

Are you looking for fun and engaging ways to integrate technology into your classroom? This is a great site to have your students create floor plans, design an architectural layout choosing materials, furniture and much more! It is called HomeStyler. Students can present their work, take screen shots and organize a variety of views using this free, fun, and engaging tool. The only downfall is that work cannot be saved unless you have students create an account. Sometimes accounts on programs like this are not allowed in schools, so make sure you check first with your administration! If you cannot create accounts and are looking for a one day lesson, this is great for your students to explore design and architectural layouts. This is a great lesson to connect with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright!

http://www.homestyler.com/designer

Functional Art: African Calabash Bowls

=

The Calabash is also called a bottle gourd or white gourd. It is a vine grown for its fruit which can either be harvested young and used a s a vegetable, or harvested, mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil or pipe. The fresh fruit has a light-green smooth ski and white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They grow in a variety of shapes. Hollowed out and dried calabashes are a very typical utensil in households across West Africa. They are used to clean rice, carry water, and as food containers. Smaller sizes are used to drink from. They are used in West African culture to make a Kora, which is a harp lute.

Resources for this Lesson:

Great Article and Images-http://www.farfungplaces.com/keeper/handmade/calabash_.html

Great Article-http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/17-1/Konan.pdf

Steps for the Art Lesson:

You need a bowl of some sort, a small yogurt cup, some art paste and aluminum foil. You can also use flower and water to make a paper mache' paste instead of using art paste. Whatever you have on hand works great! Below is an image of what the paper mache' shape looks like using the red bowl shape and yogurt container that I used. 

First you need to wrap the red bowl in aluminum foil. You will then place it upside down and paper mache' this bowl. Let dry. You then will tape the yogurt cup with three pieces of masking tape to the bottom of the bowl when it is dry. You will then cut off and unwrap the bowl, take it out and then finish paper mache' in the inside of the bowl. 

I had to cut off the aluminum foil that the bowl original was wrapped in to take it out and have a nice rounded shape. I took the bowls out and only used it as a mold because they were heavy and I could reuse them again. If you find a light weight dish like a cool whip container or something that is light weight you can just paper mache' on top of that and not have to remove the bowl. 

Here is the final pieces. We used white and black as contrast using African animals and authentic shapes and patterns of calabash bowls. 

These are the bowls drying and completed.We painted them white first and let them dry, then we used black paint for the patterns. We used acrylic paint for these as the tempera paint would have chipped off. 

Art and Literature Integration: Exploring the work of Eric Carle

This year my librarian at our elementary school and I are working hand in hand to put both art and literature together for our students. We are using sketchbooks that students take from my class to her class to take notes, complete activities, and to critique art and illustrations. It has been a huge success and the students are making amazing connections. We are only doing this with our upper level elementary students grades 4-6.

Right now I am finishing up my Eric Carle units with my K-2nd graders. They have made some really awesome stuff and collage and paper making has been a super success! Can you guess which famous Eric Carle books these artworks are inspired by?

 We use hole punchers to make the leaf appear as if the hungry caterpillar was very hungry! Kinder's and 1st grade students loved punching away the holes. It was a great added detail to tell a story.

 Students created their own papers for this lesson and they had to use a ruler to design their webs. We discussed octagons and put a little bit of math into this one!

 Kinder's loved making these stars! We looked at the illustrations and read the story Draw Me A Star. We discussed texture, tints, and shades and used that for our backgrounds. We used a cake icing scrapper to do the background, these are cheap and you can find these at the Christmas Tree Shop's or cheap in the baking isle :)

Mister Seahorse was done by 2nd graders and we used tissue paper, tempera paint and watercolor paints for the background. The papers used to make up the seahorse were created by 2nd graders before we started the collage. We discussed and watched videos of Eric Carle making his amazing textured papers.

I hope you can be inspired and enjoy these fun lessons. For more ideas visit my teachers-pay-teachers shop or my Pinterest boards! Happy Creating Artistic minds and Creative Souls!

Creative Wishes,
Ashley 

Critique cards

These are the fun critique cards I use with my elementary students to get them to start talking about their art and to critique each others work. I randomly distribute these out and they usually get two a person. We then do group talks or whole class discussions. Just a new and fun way to get your students thinking outside of the box! Lesson and print out will be posted soon on TPT.