27 | May | 2019 | Mrs. Hackett's Class

Sometimes a project that was supposed to teach one concept ends up covering multiple concepts. This was one such project.

We started out looking at a variety of shapes and how we can move them. Students identified flips, slides and turns. We then talked about language and learned to use the terms: reflections, translations, and rotations.

Students thought about where these concepts would be used in the real world. One idea was in quilts. This sparked a discussion about quilts and how important they were in the early settlers’ lives.

We decided to design our own quilt blocks. Students started with squares and began to fold along lines of symmetry to create new shapes. They put these shapes together to create a quarter of a quilt block. This turned into a discussion about fractions. Students identified fractions in their colours and shapes.

Students created 3 more identical squares and put them together using reflections, translations and rotations to create their own quilt blocks.

This visual arts project was a success!

First, we learned about who Emily Carr was. We looked at many of her paintings to identify a variety of features. We used this knowledge to inspire our our works of art.

We headed outside to look at a variety of trees and sketch what we saw. Students focused on shapes, foreground and background.

The next step in this creative journey was to create a variety of painted papers. Students used a variety of tools to create the illusion of texture and focused on using colours they saw in Emily Carr’s paintings.

After that students used their sketches as a plan and began to build their collages. They chose papers that not only reflected the desired colours but also the desired texture to represent movement in nature. They layered shapes to create a foreground, middle ground, and background. They combined the painted papers with construction paper and cardboard in order to create contrast.