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Crazy About Clouds
In this lesson children will have an opportunity to linger outside and watch the clouds go by. They will then use shaving and/or whipped cream to shape and sculpt the clouds that floated by, paints to explore the color of the sky, and movement to feel like a cloud. Children will compare these experiences to the clouds and sky in By June the Light Begins to Breathe.
Functional Fashion
Students will focus on the clothing of the vaqueros in Walker’s painting and explore the connections between fashion and function. Students will also design and draw their own pieces of clothing that combine fashion with an unusual function.
How Would a ___________ Move?
Children will explore and carefully examine Wilson Hurley’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by imagining different animals moving around the painting. They will also think about and experiment with the sound of water, inspired by the waterfall portrayed in the painting.
Buck Wild
Students will look at William R. Leigh’s painting Greased Lightning and imagine stories that explain what might have startled the horse, then they will have the chance to act out their imagined stories.
Quilting “B’s”
In this lesson students will work with tangram shapes and learn to spot the shapes in Elizabeth Hopkins’s Album Quilt. After reading the book Eight Hands Round by Ann Whitford, children will have the opportunity to create their own quilt squares with tangram shapes.
Playing with Perception
After looking closely at Greased Lightning, students will examine the unusual angle the artist chose. They will explore other images of horses and then try their hand at drawing what Leigh’s scene would look like from the opposite side.
Stitches in Time
Using Elizabeth Hopkins’s Album Quilt as inspiration, students will create an album quilt of their own that tells their life story in images and patterns. They will read Quilters, a play that was written and produced in Denver, and write a creative piece that connects their experience with literature.
Wondrous Water
Students will enjoy moving like the birds in Blumenschein’s painting Mountain Lake (Eagle Nest). They will then use their powers of observation to learn what water looks like when it’s still versus when it’s moving and apply what they learn when examining the lake in the painting.
Playing With Circles
Students will explore the shape of a circle with bubbles, Terry Winters’s painting Rhyme, and a project of their own. They will identify the different colors in Rhyme, decorate circles with similar colors, and arrange smaller circles on a larger circle template, mimicking elements of Winters’s painting.
Textile Gardens
Each student will create a flower patterned quilt square in response to the floral patterns on the Pratt Family Album Quilt.
Find the Details
This lesson encourages students to focus on details and use their observations to answer hypothetical questions. They will do this by grouping objects in Sprick’s painting Release Your Plans into similar categories.