For this project, students learned about Heather Hansen and continued their study of symmetry along more than one axis. Heather is an artist based out of New Orleans. What I really like about her is that she combines two of her favorite passions: art and dance. Her art is very meditative and requires concentration and movement of her whole body. She uses charcoal while lying on a large sheet of paper to create symmetrical drawings.

With the students, we used an app for the iPad called Morphi. Morphi allows you to create and mirror drawings on different axis. This made it easier for students to create symmetrical drawings. After creating 2D drawings in the app, they can then convert them into 3D forms which can be further manipulated along different axis.

One of my goals this year was to begin using more and more technology with my students. This was a project I snagged from shinebritezamorano.com  Don does an awesome job using iPads with his students!

Forge of Neon is a free app for iPads. When using it, I expected the students to focus on symmetry using 3 or more colors and using at least 2 different axis.

After students got the knack for creating their own Invaders, I created an 8x8 grid using Google Sheets. I uploaded it into Schoology. From there, each student could access it and create their own Invaders by filling in the spreadsheets. When they finished a new character, they screenshot it and then started a new one. This was the first time we had ever used the iPads in art class and they turned out great!

The last half of class on the final day, they created an Invader character in an app called 'Bloxels.' In their classrooms, they had been creating their own worlds in Bloxels. They could then use their own Invader characters to play in the Bloxel worlds they had created!

Maya Hayuk is always one of my favorite artists to teach each year! I just love her use of bright colors! Here is the write up on this project from previous years. Enjoy the pictures from this year's students!

3rd grade took a few days to check out some photographs by Levon Biss. Levon is a commercial photographer who typical takes pictures of athletes for advertisements. He started a side-project and began taking pictures of bugs in his free-time. I love the bugs because of the incredible amounts of detail and his excellent lighting of the subjects. Levon takes around 8,000-10,000 pictures of a single bug, focusing in on tiny sections of the bug while changing the lighting over and over to get rid of shadows. He then takes all these photos of bug parts and jigsaws them together using computer software. Lastly, he prints these out on HUGE posters! 3rd grade loved looking at these itty bitty creatures and their symmetrical bodies!

The main focus was to build on our understanding of symmetry after recently completing our project on Maya Hayuk. The first day was spent making the 3 main body parts. We did this by folding our papers in half and cutting out a shape. This ensured that each body part was symmetrical.

The next two days were spent adding smaller details to the bugs such as legs, wings, antennas, stingers, pinchers, and other small designs. Students had to keep in mind that these additional details also needed to be symmetrical.

I'm so excited by how these turned out and I could hear other classes pointing which ones were their favorites in the hallway!

Only one of my 3rd grade classes got to learn about Maya Hayuk because they were a couple classes ahead of the other three classes.

Maya Hayuk is a living female artist out of Brooklyn. She creates large, geometric murals made of intersecting diagonals. The interesting creates an interwoven effect. Her murals use bright vibrant colors oftentimes overlaid on top of lighter colors. She uses a watered down paint that often runs down her walls. Because of the thinness of the paint, you can also see the mixing of colors when they overlap.

With Maya's work, we talked about the symmetry she creates. We also noticed that a lot of her paintings have light colors with bright vibrant ones painted on top. This use of color creates a sort of space or depth to her artwork, similar to the effect that we got from some of Frank Stella's paintings a couple months ago.

I showed students how to line up a strip in the center of their paper and then mirror a strip across from it on the other side of the paper. This created a "V" shape with the paper strips. I encouraged them to use various colors, to overlap, and to turn their paper upside down so that they had paper strips going both directions. The first day was spent using light tints of colors.

The second day the students continued to add strips, this time using brighter colors to help create that sense of space/depth.

I've been so busy lately but I have been wanting to write about this project for the last few weeks. Right off the bat, I wanted to say how proud I am of my 3rd graders for handling such a serious topic. Over spring break, Brussels experienced a horrific attack upon their city. Like our Paris project after their attack, I thought we would take a couple classes to honor Belgium with a project. We had a down-to-Earth discussion about what happened in Belgium and I was so impressed with how well they handled the topic. In the center of Brussels is a large courtyard. Once every two years, they cover the courtyard in a design made of locally-grown begonia flowers. Each time they make the flower carpet, their design is based on a new theme.

I used Don Masse's project idea for his mud cloths and spun it towards what I wanted to cover. Throughout the project, we talked about warm colors, geometric shapes, and symmetry. After cutting and gluing shapes for a couple classes, they finished it off by adding some more intricate details with warm colored crayons.

This was probably one of my favorite projects from the year. They did such an awesome job on it!