Beyond the basic bead with polymer clay

I've been revisiting some of my high school lessons to see if anything makes sense to bring down to the elementary level. Given their huge success rate with polymer clay on the bobbleheads, I may try some basic jewelry making again this year. A few years ago, some of my fourth grade classes created beads that were accents to their arcimboldo shrinky dink heads.

I'd love to have them try some advanced methods like caning.

The samples here were made by my high school students in a contemporary crafts class.

It's such a great way to introduce unity, variety, repetition and emphasis

I love to watch them go beyond the basic bead and explore a variety of shapes.

Here's a link to the high school lesson plan.

And here is where you can get my video tutorial and lesson plan that would be great for 4th-6th grade.

Scherenschnitte

A few years ago we took a trip to Colonial Williamsburg and I had the opportunity to take a scherenschnitte workshop. While I had usually taught paper cutting through Mexican Papel Picado, it was hard to ignore the natural tie ins to Pennsylvania Dutch culture for this PA art teacher. You can read about the workshop in the original post here.

Fourth and fifth grade have had great success with this project and it's now available with the powerpoint I share with my own students.

We started with a powerpoint of some amazing contemporary artists like kiri ken for inspiration.
How do you teach paper cutting with your students?

Artist in residence

Today was the last session with our visiting artist, Mallory Zondag. Every student in 3rd-5th grade choose a flat piece of felt to contribute to the piece and every student K-2 choose either a sphere or a cord to include. All other pieces were theirs to keep. She will combine all of their pieces onto the giant 5' x 5' felted background that all students worked on in class and it will hang prominently in our school.

Felted Spheres

During our 30-minute classes today the K, 1 & 2 students made spheres with felt. This may become rocks or pebbles in the final design. This was the second session with our artist-in-residence, Mallory Zondag.