Panera boxes rooms

Nothing bothers me more than waste. Worse than waste is waste that is clean and barely used before tossing. Panera boxes are one of them. At my school, the amazing PTA got us lunch from Panera and the company sends the food in individual boxes. Needless to say I had about 70 boxes in my art room. Students worked in groups making spaces.....interesting spaces. For me what matters THE most is that the idea NOT come from me. Too many art teachers have these amazing projects that come from them.....not the kids. That is cool and all but what a missed opportunity to teach students to be the idea creator....the originator of the project. What an amazing way to kids students ownership over their work. Below you will see a hugely diverse set of spaces. Each reflecting what MATTERED to the student, not me. The last set of images are images in which the students added themselves into their spaces using a green screen. more amazingness to come soon....in the meantime, continue to teach kids how to solve personally meaningful problems TOGETHER.....

Making symmetrical butterflies with kindergarten

construction unit - make a place

puppets with k and 2nd grade

Printmaking with 4th graders (some images from 2nd grade printmaking too)

As with all media, we begin with drawings. In 2nd grade and because we ONLY have 35 minute classes I needed to limit the content focus in order to be able to provide the resources they'd need to practice their drawing skills. Most kids, when they begin drawing they draw, or at least attempt to draw a silhouette of the figure they are trying to depict, yet, in doing that they often fail, for that is a tall order for that age group. Even for me, I'd have a hard time drawing a simple bird silhouette. Instead, I have them "see" the shapes embedded in the more complex figure and draw those. As shown in the image above, a complex bird is simply a circle, and a semi-circle. Bringing the image down to it's essentials makes drawing much simpler and manageable. 

As you can see with these drawings the simplification of the more complex figures helps tremendously in rendering a more complex figure. 

In cases where kids still struggled in drawing a figure, I would sit beside them and do a side-by-side draw with them as indicated in the image above. 

Here are some links to videos of the process after these drawings: 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZ2G_kBFcdh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This link above shows how kids used their drawings and understanding of their drawings to create a stamp. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZuqSCYvJL5/

This link above shows how we used our drawings to inform a collage, which in turn will be used to create a collagraph using folder paper (card stock).