INSTALLATIONS
We were inspired by our visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to create some installations in the classroom.

   Box jellysnip           Leap into Stories        Spinning Flower

Differences (friends stick together)         Neat or Not Neat

Louise

Picasso Guitars

My Year Two class has had lots of time exploring sculpture and I decided it was time to see if they could put into practice what they had learned. We are doing an artist study of Pablo Picasso and his guitar sculptures made out of cardboard seemed the perfect thing as we had done collage using Picasso as inspiration the previous week. I gave them cardboard boxes, tape, scissors, cardboard from inside toilet rolls, string and some templates to help them with the shape of their string instrument and off they went...

Link to Picasso Guitar sculpture images

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=picasso+guitar&client=firefox-a&hs=Hea&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=0ZWlUd3pL_GTiAfw6ICYDA&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1781&bih=843

Belinda

Exploring Sculpture

Our First Project

We began our first sculpture project based on a sculpture using recycles plastic bottles. I cut the bottoms off the bottles and the students shaped them into flower like shapes. They punched to holes in each piece and wired them together using florist wire. As we were doing a topic of Inquiry on Water we hung the sculpture so it looked like a waterfall.

 This became an ongoing learning centre that the students worked on over a number of weeks.

Belinda

Exploring Sculpture

First Explorations

I’ve started by introducing the concept of sculpture to my Year 2 class by setting out a number of materials in a learning centre for the students to explore. They were attracted by the variety of materials and tried them all but familiar construction material was the most popular. They knew the techniques to connect and create with this so possibly felt more confident to be creative.

They decided to create their own versions of creatures. 


 

Belinda

Sculpture using Recyclables

“For the past one hundred years, artists have seen creative possibilities in cast-offs. Pablo Picasso, one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, fashioned a bull’s head from a discarded bicycle handlebar and seat, while Marcel Duchamp, a founder of the Dada movement, asked viewers to see sculpture in a urinal and snow shovel. During the 1930s and 1940s, Alexander Calder made whimsical animals from coffee cans, while Joseph Cornell created intimate, surrealistic tableaux from found objects.” - Recycled Art - Willamette University

www.willamette.edu/arts/hfma/pdf/teacher_guides/Recycled_Art.pdf

For years, artists have used their imaginations and creativeness to explore the possibilities of recycling materials discarded from their original use. Just look at Picasso’s ‘Baboon and young’ displayed at MoMA, what do you think the head as been made out of?

For us, as teachers of early childhood student, recycled materials are a cheap and reasonably easily accessible resource to use to explore sculpture with our students. If we have a project in mind, just asking the school community to collect rather than throw away materials, and putting labelled collection boxes left in the playground as a reminder, will quickly provide a large quantity of what we need. Storage is always the problem so asking for specific recyclables is a must!

For inspiration, a class visit to Reverse Garbage at Marrickville could provide students with ideas, (however the variety material available can vary so it might take a few visits.)        http://reversegarbage.org.au/

Then you allow students to explore and get creative with the materials and just watch what they come up with…

More resources for using recycled materials:-

http://www.kinderart.com/recycle/

http://www.kidactivities.net/category/Crafts-Recycled-Materials.aspx

http://www.freekidscrafts.com/recycled_crafts-t27.html

http://www.kid-at-art.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUdmj9Y81MM

http://www.spoonful.com/crafts/recyclable-projects

http://www.favecrafts.com/Earth-Day-Crafts/16-Recycle-Crafts-for-Kids

http://m.pinterest.com/fruchie/recycled-art-foundation/

http://inspirationgreen.com/art-from-old-books.html

Belinda