Greek Pottery Prints

Third graders are continuing their study of Art from Ancient Civilizations. Our Greek Pottery Prints were drawn symmetrically and include a typical Greek theme such as mythology, Olympic figures, or oceanic images. We traced them on printing foam and printed them on orange or gold papers. Thanks for this great lesson idea to The Paper Pear.

Georgia Folk Art

First graders looked at the works of some of Georgia's most well-known folk artists, including Howard Finster, Mattie Lou O'Kelley and Nellie Mae Rowe. Some of the things these artists had in common were: growing up on a farm with a large family, and little or no schooling. They were self-taught artists who painted scenes familiar to them and used materials they had available - notice the sheet of notebook paper as the background in the drawing below by Nellie Mae Rowe - so we used pages from old books that were damaged and in the recycling bin.

Howard Finster

Mattie Lou O'Kelley

We also looked at examples of folk art quilts - another example of reusing materials on hand for art-making - and made a "frame" from patterned paper squares.

Art of Japan unit, grade 2

Second graders are enjoying our Japanese art unit, which started with the story of Katsushika Hokusai, the most poetic name ever in my opinion, and his many "Views of Mt. Fuji." After reading his story, The Man Who Painted A Mountain, we looked at his many artistic variations on the theme and compared them to photos of the dormant volcano. In both, we saw different seasons, times of day, weather conditions, and near and far proximity. After this lesson, we studied notan, or the Japanese art of paper cutting using balance between dark and light and positive/negative shapes.