Sculpture Comes Alive on Day 2 of the Summer Seminar
July 26th, 2011
In the second day of this year’s Art & Language Arts Summer Seminar, elementary teachers feasted on breakfast in the Southern California sun and then feasted their eyes on impressive sculptures and sumptious furniture, clocks, and textiles. After learning about sculptures and decorative art objects in the galleries with curators, participants created their own sculptures of figures, snakes, and beasts!
Getty staff and teachers had such a fun time playing today. If you participated in today’s program, please leave a comment and share one way in which you can incorporate play into your classroom in a meaningful way.
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- Every day starts out with fresh fruit, delicious baked goods, and a good dose of caffeine.
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- Our wonderful intern Joycelyn Cheung demonstrates how to create textures in clay and Model Magic using a variety of tools.
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- Teachers practiced rolling, poking, and squeezing Model Magic to get a sense of the material’s properties.
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- Teachers were encouraged to use household “tools” like straws and forks to create different types of marks.
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- After playing with clay, this teacher was inspired to create a relief sculpture of a face.
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- Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture of Standing Woman was the inspiration for sculptures made with pipe cleaners and alumnium foil.
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- Teachers were invited to depict any pose of their choosing.
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- What poses do these sculptures communicate?
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- Lower elementary teachers created snakes using Crayola Model Magic in a “terracotta” color.
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- Teachers discovered innovative ways to create snake skin.
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- Snakes in sculptures such as Antoine-Louis Barye’s Python and Gnu were the inspiration for this art-making activity.
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- Participants proudly displayed their snakes and the backgrounds they created for them.
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- What adorable animals!
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- There’s a wealth of resources for teachers on www.getty.edu. Sandy Rodriguez shows some highlights.
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How will you, a professional educator, implement the arts and games into your classroom?
In the past, the most I have implemented with my students with special needs in association with the arts and games is having them pick and choose their “BINGO” pieces (pictures associated with ELD seasons and holidays) and coloring them. But as I reflect on today’s experience with the “never dry clay”, and, “model magic”, I thought of my students creating animals or figures with the clay and using their creation as game pieces in board games (i.e. “Chutes and Ladders”, “Candyland”). They have difficulties connecting with games they are playing; this would make a great beginning in becoming interested in games as well as the arts.
Today’s sculpture project with pipe cleaners and aluminum foil is a great opportunity to encourage imaginative play in the classroom setting. Students could create whole characters around their figures, naming them, clothing them, giving them props (which they could make themselves), and creating settings or backdrops for a stage or sets. Finally, they could act out various plots and storylines (the flexibility of the pipe cleaners is great for this). They could also “visit” and interact with each others characters and create more stories. These stories could then be turned into a writing project (or series of mini-books). Another connection to language arts is the utilization of important literacy terms (setting, plot, characterization, etc).
Additionally, according to the article we read tonight, providing the students access to activities like these where they can participate in imaginative play and engage in “private speech” will also help promote the development of executive function and help them self-regulate and build self-discipline, something that many students are lacking in today.
How will you, a professional educator, implement the arts and games into your classroom?
I have had the students play board games, and fun educational games in the class, but I never really saw art as playing. Today I realized that I was playing, through the fun molding activities. I have found that incorporating play in learning has not only been motivating, but important in stimulating creativity, logic, social skills and general knowledge. I believe that through art my students will be motivated to learn more and stimulate their thinking processes. I can’t wait to have my students play and learn with the new skills that I am discovering through the ALA program.
I am glad to see research in the importance of imaginative play with purpose for children. The clay snake sculpture is something I am looking forward to doing with my new kindergarten class. I had fun experimenting with the clay products and I am sure the students will also.
What a fun day!! I was so impressed with Paris exhibit and creating my “Dancing Queen” sculpture was a great opportunity for me to show my artisitic side!!I plan to do the same activity with my students and connect it to a writing activity. I agree with Deborah that the hands-on activities that we did today were a great form of “play” and can be done through all of the art strands. Except for the extra time on the freeway today (and my scolding from Getty security!) I am really enjoying the ALA program so far!!
Using the clay today was a lot of fun. The process of turning a visual or mental image into a tangible sculpted form was inspiring.
My kindergarten students will be able to create characters for story making and retelling activities. They will be using their imagination and playing as their creatures interact with each other.
This is my first blog ever so I have to apologize first off if this is wordy. I have to say I am so excited and impressed over the ideas learned just these past two days. The “30 Second Look” is an activity I will definitely use. It was fun, felt like “play” and is a good jump start to an introduction into an art piece then a lesson. I also loved the idea of making a sculpture of a character the children will eventually write sentences or a story about. When in the lecture I thought of taking it a step further by creating a play using the characters the children developed. I also love Chrystal’s idea of creating backdrops and scenes using the sculpting activities.
I actually loved the readings we were assigned tonight. I have a five-year-old and I almost feel guilty because he has soooo many toys. Fortunately, he does engage in undaunted imaginative play so is very good at self-regulation. (He has the toys but a straw can easily be a rocket :0)
As far as the “scribbling” article, I could not agree more. It is so true that scribbling along with teaching sign language before the child is 1, promotes communication as well as self-esteem. My son has been scribbling since six months of age and much of it is hanging throughout our home (while my husband rolled his eyes, lol) For those interested, there is a terrific book “Young at Art” by Susan Striker which establishes the importance of art at a young age and how to interpret that art as well as great ideas.
Sorry about the long blog. Thanks for reading!
P.S. I love “The Sunrise” by Claude Monet