Here we go! Our very first blog post. It’s been something on the to-do list forever — the desire to share our hearts, our work and help other artists, teachers and dabblers by showing what we do. So here’s to starting out the New Year right and just jumping right in…
We are a mother and daughter team that teach art in a private classical education academy and we’ve had a lot of fun this year. As we gear up to head back to the classroom, we thought we’d take the opportunity to review some of last semester’s projects. We’ve been in our Art Around the World unit for a year and a half. It was so successful last year it’s just been natural to continue through this year. This fall we visited Australia — The Great Barrier Reef. Grade 1 through 7 did variations of this terrific low relief sea turtle project.
We love to incorporate facts about the projects we do so naturally we start with digital images and facts about the Great Barrier Reef. Did you know the reef is home to over 9,000 species. Then we study sea turtles. How cool and unique are they! Students seem to have easy recall of simple and interesting facts. We worked the sea turtle first in pencil and then watercolor, followed by colored pencil. Setting our turtles aside, we turned to studying coral beds and working our background in the same fashion. After our ocean reef is complete it’s back to some pieces of coral, fish, etc. When the pieces are completed, students cut them out and assemble on top of their background. Then to create a low relief we used pieces of foam core underneath each piece. Aren’t they just swimmingly amazing!?
Because it was so successful, we turned this into an Art Resource lesson plan that is sold in our store, if you want the work done for you. It includes facts, how to drawing steps, images and examples.
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