Kinder rainbows

We are in between units and I wanted to do something a little different but still rigorous, exciting and challenging. I had these boxes and boxes of sorted colored tops for a mural I am working on with my 4th grade students and thought to have them make a rainbow. I gave the students a white 12"x18" inch paper and I had draw 7 "rainbow" lines on them. I demonstrated placing red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple tops in the correct order and sent them on their way. 

This is an example of a finished kinder rainbow. It was hardworking to see kids get so excited about working with recycled materials and to see these mundane home items as something other than tops. In using non-traditional materials to make art students learn to see creative possibilities all around them. 

They were all very proud of their creations. 

For some colors we did not have enough for all students to cover the strip fully. Notice how this artist below solved that problem by evenly spacing or "stretching" out the color to cover the space. 


At the end of the lesson students got to sort all their tops back in separate boxes. Again, a simple idea, but one surely none have done before on this scale. To a casual onlooker the class might have felt like total chaos, yet, each child was fully engaged in sorting their colors into their correct boxes. 

Collage -2nd grade

Before embarking on a new unit I usually have students play with the media some so that I can get a gauge on what their interest and strengths and weaknesses are. In this case students were given Fiskars Squeeze punchers, creative scissors, hole punchers and small punchers along with glue and beautiful fadeless paper. Their assignment was to simply make a collage, any collage on a double blank page of their sketchbook, which in this case is just a composition book. Because I only has about 10 Fiskars punchers I combined the tables and had them work on one extended long table. This allowed more kids easy access to the limited set of materials. 


I was not expecting extreme sophisticated work this first time at bat with collage. It's important that kids get our of the way all the cliche type of ideas and slowly move onto more technically involved aspects of the media. For example, some more advanced students were starting to overlap and use the papers with negative space created when shapes were cut out. Some were using layers and combining simple shapes to make more complex figures. Sophistication only begins to happen once the child has had lots of exposure with the media. Experience cannot be rushed. The kids who are more advanced are often kids who have more freedom to make art at home and access to thee types of materials prior to class. 




Each work below shows overlap, combining simple shapes to make more complex figures, use of paper to detail and the use of overlap to create a sense of space. 

Below, this artist realized that when overlapping a shape with a hole, the color beneath it is revealed through the hole. 

A couple of broken hearts surely hold a narrative. In fact every single one of these collages hold a narrative. 

BY looking at their work I can tell this child found out that when you punch a small circle hole from a larger circle you get a moonlike shape, then chose to use the shape several times. Again, these finding can only one could learned by trying, failing, discovering on one's own. When exploration time is gutted from a unit they lose all these amazing finding. Accidental findings like these add up to an experienced artist. 

Aside from being extremely visually appealing, this collage below surely also holds a narrative.  would be very interested to know or have kids interpret. 

It's no surprise that after our bee unit kids would still be making beehives. 


The artist for the collage below told me it was a Christmas tree. Again, when allowing kids to create their own art from the media you are allowing a much higher level of thinking. Had I provided them with the idea of what to make I would have taken away from them that valuable aspect of art-making. Choice does not always mean all choices for all media at all times. With the limited time I have with them (35 minutes) I can only afford to give them choice in the content, the media must all be the same due to the limited time we have to work together. This level of freedom works for me and the kids. I never tell them what to make art about. Their ideas come from them and as all famous artists they have learned about it's in the ideas where the artist resides. 

Although we were mostly focused on 2d work this artist was so excited about making his collage 3d....I loved his enthusiasm and so it's 3d. 

These are the materials kids had access to today. I believe I will have them make several collages in their book so that all students gain sufficient experience with this media before we begin our final collage.