Tall Tales 2014- Gugu's House

Today's book was Gugu's House by Catherine Stock.  After reading the book, the children did a geometric painting, made a water bottle Ndebele doll and built cylindrical clay houses.

For the geometric paintings (Adventures in Elementary Art), the students started out by drawing lines with a ruler. Some of the students used symmetry, others, not so much. Once the lines were done, they were encouraged to paint the spaces first and then add the black outlines.

Our second project today, was creating an Ndebele doll out of a water bottle. I have actually done this project with my 4th grade classes before and had a lot of success with them. The students filled the water bottle about 1/2 way with water (so that they wouldn't tip over). Then they used polyfill and black fabric for the head and attached the head to the bottle with a rubber band. Scraps of fabric were used for the clothes and then they were decorated with all of the scrap materials that we have accumulated over the last couple of days.

Here is an authentic Ndebele doll: 

And here are the students' creations:

The last project was building a cylindrical house. The student started out with a slab of air dry clay. They created a cylinder and attached the 2 ends. They were given a piece of cardboard for the base. Tempera paint was used to decorate the houses in bold, geometric patterns. A roof was added by cutting a circle with the radius cut. This was folded to create a cone shape. The children used popsicle sticks and yarn to make the roof look thatched.

An Ndebele cylindrical house: 

The students' houses: 

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Tall Tales 2014- Zonk, The Dreaming Tortoise

Today's book was Zonk, The Dreaming Tortoise by David Hoobler.   After reading the book, we were set to start our 3 activities.

The first one was a water bottle/soda bottle turtle (Pinterest). The parents brought in water bottles and soda bottles. We had knives and scissors on hand for them to cut the bottom off of the bottle. The children used a tracer (not my preferred choice, but for these summer activities and for the sanity of the parents, I use them) to trace the shape of the turtle onto a piece of foam. This was cut out and then the bottle was glued onto the foam with tacky glue. The children used all of the materials that were left over from yesterday to decorate their turtles (sequins, buttons, yarn, ribbon, scrapbook paper, etc).

The second activity was a turtle made out of a CD (Pinterest). Many of the parents brought their own CD, but we had some on hand for those who did not. They traced the body of the turtle onto a piece of construction paper, cut it out and then glued the CD onto the paper. They decorated the turtles with glitter glue, ribbons, sequins, buttons, yarn, etc.

Our last activity was a watercolor resist (Pinterest). The children drew and colored their turtles with oil pastels and then used liquid watercolors (blue, green and yellow) to create a resist over their drawing.

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