Paper Bag Puppets

 

While my high schoolers could spend a week, with each student making enough shadow puppets to cast a small show, my elementary school students didn't have that kind of time...or skill set. We started simple, with paper bags. two dots on a bag is technically all you need for a puppet. I limited my students to green paper bags as the starting point and some students wanted to make animals like lizards and frogs, others wanted to make monsters or aliens. One made Elphaba from Wicked, another made a little green man with a bow tie and mustache. It's a short and simple assignment that has to do with making choices, finding resources, cutting and pasting. Ultimately, it's a project that shows how creativity is possible by having your own ideas and making those ideas tangible.

Lots of Dots: Aboriginal Inspired Dot Paintings

Did you know that there are more kangaroos than there are people in Australia? It was fun to study Australian history and culture with my students before making Aboriginal-inspired dot paintings. These paintings use symbols to represent things such as bodies of water or gatherings of people. Often they include handprints or or animal shapes. 

Dark paper made for a nice value contrast with bright or light colors, which is helpful for my students with low vision, and the acrylic dots made from the backs of pencils dipped in paint became tactile bumps once the paint dried. This project can be done in a period or two of art class, which meant there was plenty of time for discussion of symbolism in art, and how important it is to appreciate cultures other than our own.

 

Mosaics Project

We began our Art class unit about art around the world by studying Ancient Roman mosaics. Long before Italy was a country with Rome as a capital, it was part of a huge empire, extending into Africa and Great Britain. And the mosaics with intricate images made of thousands of tiny colored glass and ceramic tiles, like pixels. There were complex boarder patterns, intricate scenes from daily life. a wide range of value would give the illusion of space to images of people, animals, and still life objects. 

 My students chose from a variety of colored tiles in my room, put on a pair of safety glasses, and then took a hammer to the tile to break it into smaller pieces. Our classroom has an outdoor patio, where we could attack the tiles on bricks without having to worry about a big indoor mess. 

Students each drew a simple image onto a piece of wood, and then glued their tiles down with hot glue or hot glue. It helps to start with the big pieces and then fit smaller pieces into the remaining spaces. I bought a bag of sand grout, and half the bag ended up being enough for 15 mosaics of various sizes. We mixed a cup or two at a time, covering the top with a square of mat board, trying to "squeegee" it into all the cracks. After it sits long enough to harden, the excess on the top can wiped and polished up with a rag. Everyone was so excited to see how their projects turned out. 

 

Cloud 9: Making Clouds from Paper Lanterns

I never imagined how easy it would be to make home-made clouds that look like the real thing.

You can make one in a couple of hours. I used a hot glue gun with large hot glue sticks, and attached about 4 round paper lanterns together. You can cut small holes on either side if you want them to fit together a little more snuggly and have a large whole between each chamber so that you can easily string lights inside the entire cloud. But I like to keep them a little less like one blob and more like separate billows of the same cloud. I was able to poke my finger through the sides after they were glued. Use lots of glue in a circle about the circumference of an apple, and then old them together until the glue cools.

Then I put more circles of hot glue on one lantern on a time and held a handful of Poly-fil against the glue spots. bit by bit, you cover the cloud, going back to check on bald spots. I also used quilt batting to cover the wholes in the bottom and some of the cracks before adding Poly-fil stuffing to the top of the batting. The stuffing sticks better to the paper lantern than the batting though. Just kind of pull it over the holes to hide the fact that these are really lanterns. I made sure that the hanging loops were at the top, and plan on using fishing line to hang it from the ceiling for our Enchantment Under the Stars prom. I have some LED lights to help them glow pink or purple. The more varied the sizes of lanterns the better. Keep the small ones on top and sides. 

It takes about 10 large glue sticks and a little more than half a pound of Polyfil for one cloud. I made about six and still half half of my 13.5 box of stuffing left. (It was $35 a box).

Whether you are decorating a bedroom, or for baby shower or bridal shower. These clouds can create a really special ambiance that makes you feel like you are on cloud 9!

 

Painting a Night Sky Back Drop

We've got some fun events coming up at my school. A spring concert, and a prom, with the theme: Enchantment under the stars. A starry & cloudy night sky killed two birds with one stone, just like last year when the prom theme was Enchanted Forrest, and the spring program was Into the Woods. I love working smarter, so I can work harder on other projects. We started with a blue background, starting with the darkest blue at the top, and adding lighter blue to the paint pan, until it was a sky blue at the bottom. A couple of my students got a kick out of giving our stars of the silver screen (from our Hooray for Hollywood prom) some wacky features during the process.

As soon as that dried, I had two more students add the stars. The more the better. They wanted to space them all evenly, so I had to remind them to think in clusters and make some bigger than the others. Most of the stars were 6-8 feet off the ground so we tilted the sets down on a chair to make it more accessible.

When it comes to making clouds, it's easy to over-do it. Start with darker values. Just subtly shift the value from the background. And I used a brush that was about 4 inches wide to start.  Then I started adding lighter colors until there was some areas of white, usually around the edges and tops of clouds using a one inch brush. It would make more sense to have a moon reflecting light back onto the clouds, but I'm saving a big moon for another photo op. I like to use an almost dry brush and scrub it on in circular motions so that it doesn't come off as a flat, coloring-book-style cloud. It didn't take long, and it is gratifying to knock out what is essentially a 32 foot mural in a day.

 

Social Awareness Stop Motion Project

 After finishing our fun class project: Monsters on the Town, I proposed we do something more personal. I asked students questions: What is love? What is the meaning of life? What's the secret of happiness? The big concept questions answered by kids. Everyone was self-conscious and I didn't very interesting responses. Even when I asked what it was like being blind, some didn't know how to respond. But once I got them talking about what they wished sighted people knew about them, they opened up.

When people find out I work out I work with blind students, they start talking about sign language. Yes, I took American Sign Language in college, but I don't use it at work. The students can't see. The students complain about the same misconception. People confuse blindness for deafness and raise their voices or assume they speak sign language.

My students wish everyone understood that blindness is a spectrum, that you can have vision and lose it. They want to know when you enter a room and when you leave a room. Don't try to quiz them on your voice; let them know who you are.

They get tired of hearing phrases like "here" when they're being handed something, and "over there" when they're trying to find something. They can't see you pointing. We used stop motion animation with the camera from the top much of the time--just moving flat pieces of craft foam and felt on a piece of paper.

Other times we used claymation figures with the camera in the front. But hopefully, it all came together in a coherent way that helps my students self-advocate. I want them to learn that art can be used for a good purpose to edify and inform. What We Wish Sighted People Knew. 

Check it out using the following link: https://youtu.be/fqI1pu4BvB0

Monster Mania

If you want students to learn how to think creatively, the secret is giving set boundaries, and lots of tools for students to explore possibilities within those boundaries. For my monster assignment, students had access to bins and bins of supplies: pipe cleaners, yarn, feathers, wood, cardboard, and more. 

Too many options feels overwhelming and can lead to paralysis, so it's best to walk them through the process. You can dig through supplies that lead to inspiration. I  might find a discarded nest ornament, and say, I wonder if this could be used as a baby carriage since eggs are basically eggs. What do we have that could make wheels? What would a birdlike monster look like? Does it have to have wings? What would help us hint at a bird without it becoming a bird?  It's also good to start with the idea first: I want a skate boarding cyclops. I'm going to sketch it out and then try to find the materials needed to make it. Give each creature a name and personality.

For little kids and for those starting out, a basic form is all it takes to get going. A toilet paper tube, or a dixie cup, might be the basis for some legless creature. Think about colors and surface textures: foam, felt, tape, or tissue paper can all help transform the household item to the point where students want to add tentacles or antennae. You know you are doing something right when lots of laughter is part of the process. This project was just the beginning, but it was a great way to start on our film making experience.