Recycled CD Weavings

What a Fun Project!

Most of my 4th grade students just finished a very fun weaving project. After learning or reviewing the basics of weaving by doing a paper weaving, students learned how to weave in a circle. Our choice of loom - discarded CD, DVD, and CDROM discs.

I had seen examples of these on Pinterest this past summer and couldn't wait to try it out. So I put out the word to staff and students in my three schools that we needed old discs to use for a project. I had quite a few staff members looking through their old music collections and gladly parting with many. They quietly turned over their Jackson Five, New Kids on the Block, and Flashdance Soundtracks. Before long I had plenty of discs to add to my old AOL discs I had saved for that project down the road. (Art teachers are savers if you didn't know!)

I went back to my Pinterest board where I had pinned the idea months ago. It led me to a great tutorial from Joanne at We Heart Art.   Check out her tutorial before you give it a try! I pulled some yarn together and set to making one myself. Listen to a veteran art teacher - Never do a project without first trying it yourself!! You're just asking for a disaster if you don't. Yes this is from experience! 

I had a blast making my example.

This project took 3-4 art times depending on the class (I did it with 5 different classes) and their abilities. As I figured it took most classes one whole time to watch me demonstrate how to warp the disc and for them to actually do this. I encouraged them to partner up to help each other with tying the knots. Of course I ended up plopping myself down at a table with a long line of students needing help getting the warp string tied tight.

After that first day the rest was easy! Once students got the hang of the weaving it went quickly. Students finishing early help reteach others how to do it. Great for team building!

I loved the way I had seen the finished weavings hanging all together so that is what I intended for displaying these. I've finished putting up the weaving display at one school but still need to do this at the other two. Small colorful paperclips were what I used to link the discs together.

I'm very impressed with how they look and have gotten quite a few compliments!

Newspaper Self-Portrait Collage

This was one of the projects I did with my 4th graders for my "Reuse, Recycle, & Recreate" unit.





Each year I do self-portraits with all my students so a mention that we were going to begin our self-portraits with my fourth graders led to the inquiry, "how are we going to do them this year? Are we going to paint? Rip paper? Oil pastels like last year?" As I laughed at their questions, I held up a newspaper and told them, "We are going to use this." That got them wondering!

We discussed the element of value and I had them do a value scale using pencil. As students were working on their value scales I photographed them. Using GimpI (a free alternative to Photoshop)I desaturated the photos to black and white and used the posterize filter to limit the number of values so students could see the different values in their photo more easily.

Students use the photos as a reference as they worked to recreate a self-portrait using the different values of ink in the news paper. The project took most students 2-45 minute class periods to complete.

Here are a couple of student examples:

A couple of reflection notes on this project -
* Many of my 4th graders found this a project a bit of a challenge. I think that moving it up to 5th or 6th grade might be a better fit for students in my school.

* As some students worked I watched them stop and read parts of the newspaper. This made me think that having students include words and/or phrases they find important to them into the portraits would be a great idea. I was in a bit of a time crunch trying to get these done before our Family Art Night so I didn't incorporate this idea then - but would definitely in the future.

Recycling, Rousseau, & Technology

A project that started with these -

And ended with this -

As part of my Reuse*Recycle*ReCreate unit with students at one of my schools, first grade students used egg cartons, paint, and lots of odds & ends to create Henri Rousseau inspired collage pictures.
Students were introduced to artist Henri Rousseau through watching Dropping in on Henri Rousseau and exploring his paintings using a PowerPoint I made up for them. This took one whole class period. I also explained what artwork they would be creating inspired by Rousseau.

Next class we started by painting some tagboard to give a jungle-like colored background for our collage. I had students use white tagboard instead of regular paper so it would hold up to all the stuff that would be glued to it. I gave students green tempera along side a little dab of yellow, brown, and blue. This allowed students the chance to experiment with color mixing to create some different greens in their background painting.
When they finished the background painting they picked up two or three egg carton sections and some yellow, orange, and brown paint. They were told these would be lions for their jungle collage and encouraged to mix and paint them with colors that would work for lions.

The third class we started the big fun of beginning to glue down things into our collages. The lion egg cartons were glued on first and then students gave them faces with fine markers and googly eyes. They added manes using yarn scraps or Christmas tinsel. They also added yarn tails.
Once their lions were complete the real creativity began. I had scraps of odds & ends in boxes and students used these and paper scraps to create a jungle environment for the lions. The favorite supply was some green twisted paper ribbon that I had gathering dust on a shelf for years. This, I'm sure, was donated years ago.

Here are some of the wonderful finished works!

To bring this lesson to a close and reflect on our work students used the smartboard to create a jungle scene inspired by artist Henri Rousseau. The program these students are worked with, along with more information on the artist, can be found at the National Gallery of Art kids website
This interactive program allows students to create a jungle scene similar to the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Students can change the sky and ground and then add trees, bushes, flowers, and animals. This program allows students to practice placing objects into a landscape and resizing them or placing them as to create distance and depth in a picture (what we refer to as perspective in art). Animals and plants placed lower on the screen and made larger give the appearance that they are close up, while placing animals and objects higher up and smaller give the appearance of being farther back in the distance. Students can also explore overlapping to show depth and distance. This is a great tool. Student also really get excited when certain animals or objects flutter or move when they touch them on the screen.
While students in pairs got a chance to work on the smartboard - which I rather like to refer to as the smARTboard in my room - other students finished any details on their collage or worked on Rousseau coloring sheets.

It was a very successful project that incorporated a great deal of elements!

A special thanks to Jodi at Onecrayolashort.blogspot for the wonderful idea!

Cardboard Creations

What do you do with a whole bunch of cardboard boxes from all the food we eat?

You start to cut them up...and glue them together...

A Cardboard Creature emerges...A Lucky Ladybug!
This is an example for a project I will be doing with some of my 3rd grade classes as part of my Reuse-Recycle-Recreate unit. When I was gathering up ideas for this unit I came across some great projects done by other wonderful art teachers around the world. This project is inspired by Katie Gonzalez from Briargrove Elementary. Here's a link to her blog http://katieweymouth.blogspot.com/2010/01/cardboard-animal-creations.html She has a lot of great ideas!

Stay tune for more Reuse-Recycle-Recreate projects!