Tuesday, August 23, 2016

In the Art Room: Texture Relief with Second Grade

Well, now that our Monochromatic Selifes are finished and we are impatiently waiting for that art teacher to hang them up (can I contract out for that? I'm buried under cute and colorful self-portraits!), it's time for us all to move on to our next masterpiece: Texture Relief Dots for Dot Day! 
 Each of my grade levels, kindergarten thru fourth grade, we are creating a dot-based work of art inspired by Peter H. Reynold's The Dot. We're doing all new Dot Day projects this year...if you like to check out all the Dot projects we've done over the years, check here.
This year, for second grade, I decided to give one of my most popular blog posts a reboot and focus on texture.
Filming my lessons over the weekend means I have a shorter weekend...but a much smoother week. I am loving this new method. I actually feel like the kids are learning so much more as I don't forget valuable vocabulary and information. I just hope I have the stamina to keep it up! I also enjoy sharing them with you. Please feel free to use in your art rooms.
 For this project, we used the following:

* 8" Cardboard Circles purchased from Amazon
* 3M Spray Adhesive
* $1 a can matte spray paint from Home Depot. Be sure and get the cheap stuff, it rubs off the best.
* The finest of steel wool, 000 
* Textured items like leaves, burlap, twine, lace, etc.
* Aluminum foil. I found boxes of sheets of foil that worked really well because it was the perfect size. It is then and may tear so tell the kids to be careful.
Before the kids arrived, I sprayed each of their circles with the adhesive. This way, they were ready to start applying their textured items. When finished, they brought them to me. I sprayed again, added the foil and sent them to their seat to rub the foil and reveal the texture.
Once it was rubbed, the kids trimmed off the excess and folded it underneath. That took up all of our 30 minutes of art class.
 I took all of the circles outside today and spray painted them black. 
The kids watched the bit of video about burnishing. We definitely did have some small holes and tears happen. A thicker foil might have helped but it would have given us a less detailed texture design. 
 I mean...
 How cool is that? After the burnishing was complete and our hands were washed, we chatted some more about texture and the difference between real and implied. This was such a fun and quick lesson that gave us beautiful results.
I really like how they look on their messy mats, we just might have to frame them out that way!
I'm interested to know what other textures y'all might recommend we use in the future. I'd love to add more to this fun project!

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18 comments:

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    1. Thanks, I'll tell the kids you said so! :)

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  2. This is GENIUS! How did you ever come up with this? I can't wait to try it!

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    1. We've done several versions of this over the years...I learned about it at a workshop I attended ages ago!

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  3. Anonymous8/23/2016

    When you burnish the spray paint...dust is created. Wont this be harmful to the kids? Want to do this so bad, just worried!

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    1. Dust is created, you are right! However, the kids know not to breathe it in but to blow it off in the opposite direction of their friends :)

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  4. These came out great! I love working with collage and foil. One of my favorite projects is gluing on the textures to the cardboard and then printing them like a collagraph before covering them with foil for a repousee type piece! It makes for a 2-3 class evolving project.
    http://floridacreate.blogspot.com/2009/10/collagraphs.html?q=foil
    Another favorite is to draw and cut out the profiles of famous people with thin cardboard and glue them onto a circular piece of cardboard and cover with foil for a shiny coin. You could use the burnishing method on top or use permanent makres for color. Great for honoring any president or even focusing on a particular country. During summer camp several years back, a Summer Olympic year-we made medals for our favorite sport using cardbaord cut-outs of the athlete glued onto the cardboard, covered in foil and colored with perament markers. a little tricky to get the perspective, so I brought in lots of photos of athletes in action, but fun! We also used those sticky hole reinforcement rings to create the Olympic symbol! We punched a hole in the medal and threaded through a ribbon! http://floridacreate.blogspot.com/2012/08/summer-olympic-medals.html http://floridacreate.blogspot.com/2012/08/summer-olympic-medals-kids-work.html

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  5. Anonymous8/24/2016

    Cassie, how you film your videos? Do you use a tablet? Does someone film for you or do you have some sort of tripod? I would like to make some instructional videos for my classroom and would appreciate any helpful hints you can give me. Thanks! I look forward to seeing you at the TAEA conference!

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    1. Hi!! I film them myself using a tripod. You can read all about it here where I made a video about making videos ;) https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/2016/03/in-art-room-creating-videos.html

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  6. What burnishing video did you use? Would love to do this with my kids!

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    1. I shared with them the video I created...in the blog post :)

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  7. Anonymous8/29/2016

    Awesome lesson. So interestingly inserting great learning in fun. And a great voice, too.
    I am thinking how could I use this in a wall art piece. Thanks, Yvette

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  8. Love this Cassie- thank you for sharing we will be doing this project this week in my art class! We are also going to reuse the bags that onions, clementines, and garlic come in for some added textures. Thanks again! :)

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  9. I loved the way these looked and did them with my 2nd graders, too. We received lots of compliments and everyone was surprised that the 2nd graders were responsible for the beautiful work. My problem was itching due to the steel wool. What did you do to avoid that? I had the kids burnish on a placemat on the table and cautioned about blowing, swishing, etc. but they still managed to get the "dust" all over themselves and complain of itching. Please share how you handled this and hopefully avoided my mistakes.

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  10. I did this project with my 5 year old class. They only have 20 minutes of art time. I told the class they were creating the moon. They were shown pictures of the moon and asked what they observed. They used glue sticks to cover the pre-cut circles and then placed the objects on top. String, burlap and foam snowflakes were provided. Next they covered this with heavy duty aluminum foil. They were given a cotton ball to rub over the foil to see the textures appear. In the final step the little ones dipped a cotton ball in black paint and rubbed it all over the surface. What I noticed is that the textures did not show up that well. With the next class I switched to regular aluminum foil and the result was much better. Thank you for the inspiration. Kim S

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