Calder and Color: Lesson 6

This week, we needed to continue our Alexander Calder inspired lesson, where the students were constructing their own wind chime mobiles out of their chosen found objects. At the start of class we introduced our guest visitors (who ended up being a very big help during our lesson!). We reminded them of what they were working on last week, and how Calder’s artwork related to our theme of movement. We showed them once again, how to wrap wire around a popsicle stick and add tape to it to hold it together (explaining how to connect the different parts of the mobile).

After the students worked on their mobiles for the first half of class, as everyone finished up, we decided to move to our next lesson activities. This lesson involved the experimentation of color movement. Specifically, we did a demonstration on how watercolor paint moves and reacts differently when it touches the water on the paper, and how it blends with other colors to make new colors.

Next, we did a demonstration introducing Japanese marbling. A few students at a time would be coming up to make their own Japanese marbling paper. While these students were making their marbling paper, the rest of the class would be experimenting with watercolor.

The students got to drop the different colors of ink into the bucket of water.

They were so proud of their finished Japanese marbling's.

Student's finished artwork.

What We Learned:

1. Doing Demo’s- We learned that doing a demonstration on basic art techniques is much harder than you think it would be and it takes practice. We may know how to do something but actually explaining the process is very difficult. Also, It is important to know when and where to do a demonstration. We did our watercolor painting demonstration and our marbling demonstration back-to-back and we think that caused problems when the students began to start the water color experimentation because they forgot the directions on what to do and how to do it.

2. Transition & Timing of Lessons- Although we really only needed half of the class to finish last week's project, transitioning went poorly and we underestimated time. We felt like we were sort of rushing students to finish their mobile project, just so we would have enough time to do the water color and marbling demonstrations (which we ended up doing 15 minutes behind schedule). We feel like we should have spent the whole class finishing the sculptures and making them more elaborate since we were more rushed to finish the second project. Also, because we were rushed to finish the second project, some of the students didn’t get a chance to do the marbling and were very upset about it, although we are finishing them next class.

3. Too Much Paint and Paper- When we demonstrated watercolor painting, we explained that each student would get a strip of paper to experiment with, a larger piece of paper for their “good” water color painting, and a piece of palette paper that was also white. Because we passed out all three of the papers at one time, the students were very confused with the directions and what to do on each paper. Some of the students thought the palette paper was the paper they could paint on. Also, even though we told the students they could pour their own water color paint on the palettes and to only pour a dot the size of a fingernail, they still were pouring out more paint than we had instructed them to do so. This involved squirting the entire tube of paint on the paper. This aspect of our lesson really showed the age differences of the students. Those who were older picked up on our directions, while others probably needed more instruction, explanation and reminders.

What went well:

1. Snack Time- We prepared snack in the morning before the students came, however, we hid it behind mini tri-fold boards so they wouldn’t get distracted by it sitting out (Last week the students sat right next to snack during story time and routinely interrupted us, in the middle of story time, asking when snack was). After the demonstrations for our second activity, we announced that the students who were hungry were invited to the snack area for snack and a juice box. This worked very nicely because some of the students weren’t ready for snack and got to continue working, while others who were hungry could eat their snack and then go straight back to work. The students took their time getting snack, it wasn’t chaotic and they sat on the carpet in that designated section of the classroom.

2. Marbling Center- The students were very interested experimenting with the Japanese marbling ink. They loved watching the colors drop on to water and “explode” across the surface. They then enjoyed swirling the colors, although some of the students learned that mixing too much would cause all of the ink to sink to the bottom of the water. Unfortunately not all of the students were able to marble due to time but they seemed very excited that they will be able to work on this next week!