art teach art: Second Graders Demonstrate Their Learning Through Art!

This little sculpture is really small, maybe two inches tall, and it is so sweet!

This year for International Day my school decided to assign each grade a country to research and present to the rest of the school, along with a day of celebration with dances and foods. I wanted to incorporate this research into my art class and second grade art presented the perfect opportunity because the timing was right in their art curriculum.

They had been learning about Spain in their homeroom class, and I added a bit to the mix by reading to them or showing them a video about this beautiful country. Because Picasso is the most famous artist from Spain I also taught them about him, focusing particularly on his early cubist paintings and sculptures.

A four-piece Picsasso-style face!

Next came an opportunity for students to pinpoint something they learned about that they found was inspiring, and then propose an artwork of their own design that demonstrated their inspiration. Students were allowed to create anything they wanted, using any materials they wanted, as long as they could explain how their inspiration would be expressed.

I love this bull!

The previous week I had taken all 40 of my second graders to visit the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, and they had participated in a tour and class about the sculpture there. As a result it seems, most of them chose to create clay sculptures of things they were inspired by from Spain, so I added a clay building review to the lesson reminding them to score, slip, stick, and then smooth the clay to make sure it stayed together during firing. There were many soccer players, soccer balls, some queens, some roses, some Picasso-esque designs, a couple of bulls, a few buildings, and other such sculptures. Here are some of my favorites: