Second grade has been working on learning about community collaboration in an installed group of bees and honeycomb drawings! They created a drawing that represented something about themselves, cut it out and I put them next to each other on the bulletin board. I showed them how to draw a bee using simple shapes while looking at pictures of real life bees!
Students looked at images in my presentation on many Black artists including Wangechi Mutu and others who are doing exciting work in contemporary collage. I also showed them Hannah Hoch, a Dada collage artist. These inspired them to create a choice of a free form layout identity collage or one in the shape of the shadow tracing of their head. We talked about composition and selecting images that represent themselves and their identities.
Installation shot
To start the year, I had kids do some introduction community building art games then had them make sketchbooks by hand to house their sketches for the year, like warm ups that we do at the beginning of class, and as a place to develop their art ideas. These were made out of paste paper, which is a type of glue from methyl-cellulose, a papermaking biproduct. After they made a pattern with a secondary color mixed into the paste (2nd and 3rd grades) or a tertiary color (4-5th grades), they let these dry and turned them into a book cover!
Examples of paste papers
The kids worked in teams to brainstorm sketchbook ideas after I showed them a presentation on various artist’s sketchbooks and discussed why sketchbooks are important and how artists get their ideas and use them. They then drew from a myriad of choices including shading, eyes, animals and a long list of drawing prompts! I showed them how to draw things by looking at the main shapes first.
This was an activity I did where they had to complete the shapes and turn them into a thing.
Kids did a warm up for George Floyd on his birthday by drawing him a cake to remember him.
2nd grader’s work