Just before Christmas, I pulled out the aluminum and showed my 5th and 6th graders how to do some metal tooling. It was highly engaging for most of them and not super messy. The perfect solution for a project in December. I had a hunch that it would be perfect for end-of-the-year 'testing' time too and it was!
This time around, instead of just doing insects....I had my students select a favorite mythological creature. They had to draw it as big as they could on a rather small piece of paper. To introduce the lesson, I read a long passage about Eastern Vs. Wester Dragons, so that students would have an idea of the difference between the two. I had a big folder full of dragon images, thanks to an art teacher who passed them down to me....they are all from old calendar pages. We also used books from the library as references. Allowing them to choose mermaid, unicorns, cyclopses, phoenixes, and other mythical creatures made lots of students happy. This is a favorite book in my collection.
Supplies
6x9 paper (ish)
dry erase boards and markers
pencils
ink pens (to transfer to aluminum)
thick sheets of aluminum (I buy from school specialty)
felt
plastic metal tool (i tried to find a link to this but I can't figure out what to search for)
Permanent markers for coloring metal
To explain how to actually transfer the drawing to the metal, I made a video and put it on Youtube. You can watch it here.
I let students decide if they wanted to shadow cut, leave all of the metal either silver or color a background, or they could cut out their 'creature' if it wasn't too big. Then they had to make a frame, so the metal would not get all bent up. They had to choose a smaller piece for the mat, and then a larger piece which they had to draw designs on. They could draw the designs with crayon, marker or colored pencils.
Some students had trouble drawing the dragon's body, so I suggested that they just draw the eye. Those were really successful!
This time around, instead of just doing insects....I had my students select a favorite mythological creature. They had to draw it as big as they could on a rather small piece of paper. To introduce the lesson, I read a long passage about Eastern Vs. Wester Dragons, so that students would have an idea of the difference between the two. I had a big folder full of dragon images, thanks to an art teacher who passed them down to me....they are all from old calendar pages. We also used books from the library as references. Allowing them to choose mermaid, unicorns, cyclopses, phoenixes, and other mythical creatures made lots of students happy. This is a favorite book in my collection.
Supplies
6x9 paper (ish)
dry erase boards and markers
pencils
ink pens (to transfer to aluminum)
thick sheets of aluminum (I buy from school specialty)
felt
plastic metal tool (i tried to find a link to this but I can't figure out what to search for)
Permanent markers for coloring metal
To explain how to actually transfer the drawing to the metal, I made a video and put it on Youtube. You can watch it here.
I let students decide if they wanted to shadow cut, leave all of the metal either silver or color a background, or they could cut out their 'creature' if it wasn't too big. Then they had to make a frame, so the metal would not get all bent up. They had to choose a smaller piece for the mat, and then a larger piece which they had to draw designs on. They could draw the designs with crayon, marker or colored pencils.
Some students had trouble drawing the dragon's body, so I suggested that they just draw the eye. Those were really successful!
These are all from 6th graders. It is amazing the variety of skill level that is shown in this project. Also, I use clothes pins to organize artwork between class periods.
The passage that I read to each class about dragons came from this book called Children and Painting by Cathy Weisman Topal.
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