Face Pots, 5th Grade

 

Face pots are my favorite 5th grade clay lesson!  They turn out amazing every year. 

Students begin this lesson by creating clay pots using slabs. (I have my students make their own slabs. We do not have a slab roller).  Students then add details like eyes, nose and mouths. We also discuss the importance of scoring/slipping to make sure all the pieces stay connected.

These are amazing! There is also a great History Detectives episode that explains the history of face jugs.  I often show this video to my students at the beginning of this lesson.  

Prints, 5th Grade

These prints were made by my fifth graders.  Students carved into styrofoam and printed it four times. 

 This is the first year that I allowed them to experiment with multiple colors.  I was worried that the colors would become too mixed up, but the students pleasantly surprised me.  It turned out great, and I like the look of multiple colors!

Face Pots, 5th Grade

This is one of my favorite lessons every year.  Students use the slab technique to create face pots.

To introduce this lesson, we always discuss the history of face pots in America.  PBS has a great episode of History Detectives, all about face jugs.  I always begin by having my students watch this video,  https://www.pbs.org/video/history-detectives-face-jug/

Students then create their own face pots by using slabs and coils.  I always emphasize the importance of scoring and slipping.  This is the first year that I have not had a single eye ball fall off the pots.  I guess they listened well this year.

After firing, students glaze the pots.  I always tell them to use at least 3 coats of glaze.  I love these this year!

Prints, 5th Grade

 These are styrofoam prints created by my fifth graders.  Each student carved a design into a piece of styrofoam, and then printed it four times.  I kept this fairly open ended.  Students could create any design as long as it didn't have words or letters.  Students also chose the colors they wanted to print. Some students chose to make all four prints the same color, while others chose multiple colors.   

 I think these turned out really well!

Clay Faces, 5th Grade

A few weeks back, I posted about my students' clay pots, but at that point the pots had not been glazed.  Here are the final results.

 As I mentioned in my previous post, these pots were made using the slab technique. All details were added using the score and slip method.   Before creating these pots, my students watched this History Detectives video.  It really is a great introduction to the history of face pots. 

Face Pots, 5th Grade

My fifth graders have been working hard on their clay pots in the last few weeks.  To begin, I showed my students this History Detectives Video, by PBS, to introduce the history of face pots.  This video explains how face pots can be traced back to African Americans during the mid 1800's.    

 I then taught my students how to create a clay pot by making slabs.  Students added details to their face pot, and I taught them to score and slip all added pieces. 

These are looking great so far.  After these are out of the kiln, we will be glazing them.

2 Sided Portrait, 5th Grade

 I teach this lesson every year, and I always love the results.  For this lesson, students create a two sided portrait.  One side must be human with correct proportions, and the other side can be animal, monster, or alien.  These were painted with tempera paint. 

This year the results were wonderful.  I love their creativity!

Beginning of the Year Self Portraits

 It's the beginning of the school year, and my students have spent the last two art classes drawing self portraits.  For this assignment, I mostly wanted to gauge their abilities, so I gave student the freedom to draw their portrait either realistic or cartoonish.
 Considering that I gave the students little guidance on how to draw a person, I feel my students did an amazing job!  My plan is to do another self portrait at the end of the school year, so we can compare their growth.

 I think these turned out wonderful!

One Point Perspective, 4th and 5th Grade.

Believe it or not, after 10 years of teaching, this was my first time teaching one point perspective to my students.  Until I saw this simple lesson on the blog Elementary Art is Fun, I have always been intimidated to teach one point perspective to young children. This lesson breaks one point perspective into simple, easy to understand steps.

While students did struggle a little with understanding one point perspective, with a little guidance, they did a great job!

Notans, 4th and 5th Grade

My 4th and 5th graders created Notions.  Notan is a Japanese word for the interactions between dark and light.  Traditionally Notans use a black square piece of paper, which is then cut to create symmetrical images that play with the idea of positive and negative space.  It also ties perfectly into geometry, since Notans focus on reflections/flips.

Clay Faces, 5th Grade

In the last few weeks, I have been doing a variety of clay projects with my 3-5th graders.  My fifth graders finished their clay faces this week.

 Students created this in 2 (35 minute) art classes.  The first class, they created the clay face.  The second class, they painted it with tempera paint.  Unfortunately, I do not have enough glaze this year, but the tempera paint turned out nice anyway.

 I love the creativity in these!

Art Show!

 Here are some photos of our school wide art show.  Every students from PreK- 5th grade had one piece of artwork in the art show.  There were about 720 works of art on display.

This show doubled as a fundraiser. We used a company called Artome to frame the artwork.  It was really simple.  Basically, I sent artwork to Artome, which I labeled by student name, grade, and class.  They framed the artwork, and brought it the night of the show.  Artome even set the entire show up for me.  We sold the frames for $25 dollars a piece, and parents were able to take their child's framed artwork home that night.  After the show was over, Artome dismantled the entire show and mailed the unsold artwork back to the school about two weeks later.  Artome only charged us for the frames that were sold.

The art show turned out great, and we did end up raising a good amount of money for the school!  If you are looking for an simple way to do an art show for a large school, I would definitely recommend Artome.

Plaster Wrap Sculptures, 5th Grade

Every year I try to have my students create sculptures from recycled materials.  Usually we do it with papermache. However, this year, I thought I would try plaster wrap instead.  I LOVED plaster wrap, because it was easy to clean up and dried quickly.

Students began by creating sculptures out of bottles, foil, cardboard, and other recycled materials. After this, students covered their sculptures in plaster wrap.   Lastly, students painted their sculptures with tempera paint.

I think these turned out Wonderful!

County Art Show

Every year my county has a big art show and every school has a display. Here is my school's display for this year.

Ceramics Club

I have been teaching a ceramics club every Thursday after school.  This week they finished making boxes in the shape of cake slices.  Here are the results.

School Weaving

My school has been working on a recycling theme this year.  For the last few months, students have been learning about being Green and doing cross-curricular assignments based on this theme.   To tie into this, I had my art students collect scraps of fabric.  Most of the fabric came from old clothes, blankets, or sheets.  We then weaved it through chicken wire.  Here are the results.  

 In order to involve all students, I had each student weave one strip of fabric.  The idea is to have the entire school involved in the weaving.  The weaving will be displayed in the school when it is finished.

Ceramics Club

This year I decided to start a ceramics club after school.  Every Thursday I have ten 4th and 5th graders meet in the art room to learn ceramics.  Here are a few pictures of what we have been creating so far.

 The students have really been enjoying this club, and I have really like having time to build the student's ceramics skills.

The Dot, 5th Grade

During the first week of school, I read my students The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.  After this, they created dots of their own with construction paper and pastels.  I love the results, and it was a great way to way to begin the school year.

Dream Home Paintings, 5th Grade

This was a fun lesson that had wonderful results. Students drew their dream home for this lesson.  To begin, I gave my students pictures of a variety of houses to use as references.  I then showed students how houses can be drawn using simple lines and shapes.  Students drew their houses with black sharpie markers, and painted with liquid watercolors.  

I think these turned out wonderful!  and I love how each one is unique.