abTeaching Activities
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Baby Rattlesnake - Cut paper seasonal counting murals
Break students up into four groups (one for each season) or alternatively, make one huge mural each season with the entire class. Brainstorm all the animals, plants, birds, reptiles, and different elements in your local environment for that season (urban, suburban, rural, or wilderness all have many kinds of wildlife). Have 2 students use large sheets of colored butchers paper to make the background with a ground and sky before adding different elements such as mountains and or trees, or buildings etc. Students then individually make elements in a counting pattern to go on the mural. Place the background flat and don't glue elements on until you have them all in place so you can move them around for the best composition. Remember contrasts - warm and cool colors etc. as well as overlapping and big and small - near and far to create distance. |
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Uncle Nacho's Hat - Book About Change
Students write a story about a major change in their lives. What was hard about this change. What was good about the change. Write or type the story on a piece of 8-1/2 X 11" paper, drawing a 1" border around the edge. On another piece of 8-1/2X11" paper, draw the same border and inside do a drawing that illustrates the story with tempera paints or other materials. Using black or colored 12"X18" construction paper, fold in half to make two 9"X12" sections. Glue each page inside the folder, then glue all the pages together back to back to make a book about change for the classroom or library.
The book is also about finding a place for the old and discarded - so children could collect recycled materials and make a sculpture to hang near the school recycling bins or make enticing signs encouraging people to recycle to place around town.
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Where Fireflies Dance - Destiny Maps
Children make a map of their lives and what their imagined possible futures could be as people involved in making a better world. First they discuss who makes the world a good place and why. Then they write what they know about where and how they were born followed by everything important that has happened to them before writing down who they might like to become. Using pencil on black construction paper
students make marks on the paper as to where each point of their journey map might be before drawing a symbol to represent that event and maybe a few words of description. They color their symbols in with oil pastels or colored pencils before making a line or route connecting the different parts of the map. Don't forget to include a compass.
On completion of the maps the teacher exhibits the maps
at the local library or City Hall to show community members their students sense of civic care.
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Just Like Home - Immigrant Cartoon Narratives
To counter discrimination against recent immigrants have students create immigrant cartoon narratives of their own families' immigrant history. Students will need to research this. If they are unable to find out this information they can create an imaginary history or imagine that they are aliens who have come to earth and what that would be like as an alien who can't speak the language, doesn't know the customs, and is scared and lonely for home.
Download the cartoon template here and have students lightly pencil in first before drawing with black pens and then color pencils or watercolors.
The template can be used in any direction.
Print extra templates and create an installation in a public place such as the local library inviting others to participate by exploring their own immigrant heritages of how they all came to be in this place called home.
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Leaving For America - Cultural sunflowers
Some of the themes in this book include the importance of family, cultural traditions, war, immigration, and learning a new language.
Sunflowers play a prominent role in this book mirroring the emotions of the protagonist with faces hidden inside the flowers. See if a parent will make wooden sunflowers for the students to paint. Students paint cultural images about their family in the central "face" of the sunflower. Plant real sunflowers along with the wooden sunflowers in the community to help brighten up a public place and celebrate cultural diversity.
This lesson idea was adapted from some of my NIU Art for Elementary Teachers' students.
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Just Like Me: Stories and Pictures by Fourteen Artists
Tape large sheets of paper together for students to draw themselves and where they live including their neighborhood as well as things from their culture or things that they identify with. If possible use charcoal and blending. The challenge is where one student's piece of paper butts up to their neighboring student they have to negotiate where the edges meet so that their environment flows into the next. The concept is to not only for students to make cultural self-portraits showing classroom diversity but also to show how we are all interconnected.
This lesson idea was adapted from one by fellow children's book artist Carl Angel http://www.carlqangel.com |
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Honoring Our Ancestors: Stories and Pictures by Fourteen Artists
Students make a portrait of an ancestor or an imaginary ancestor.
Draw their portrait and write about why they feel connected to them.
The book is full of bright collors, patterns, and textures related to the different artists' cultures. How can students make these cultural connections with their own ancestors?
My page has both blood and spirit relatives who helped make me who I am. Who do the students feel kinship with from history or their community? How can they honor these people. Nancy Hom writes about her father being like a super-hero. If the teacher has time, take photographs of local community members, who help make it a better or functioning place, that the children can honor by doing their portraits as super-heroes. |
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