Fifth Grade Kandinsky Musical Compositions

The first project that I had 5th grade work on this year was music inspired. The students learned about the artist Wassily Kandinsky and how he was influenced by music. We combined both of these topics and the students chose a musical instrument (I had a LOT of guitars, unfortunately) and drew it on a piece of construction paper. I encouraged them to draw it large enough so that the instrument would go off of the page.



They filled in the background using shapes that were inspired by Kandinsky artworks.

The students were given the choice of using crayons, color sticks, oil pastels or markers to color their composition in 1 color scheme (primary, secondary, complementary- a review from previous years). Some of them chose to use a combination of all of these.

I had old music books handy and the students were able to add ripped up pages of sheet music onto their background.

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Tall Tales- The Remarkable Farkle McBride

Today's book was The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow. None of the students had heard this book yet, so it was fun reading it to them for the first time.

Our first project of the day was building a drum out of recycled materials. The parents were asked to bring a cylindrical container for their child. We had coffee cans, juice containers, milk jugs, oatmeal containers, etc. The children used the materials that we have accumulated over the last 4 days to decorate their drums. Some of them even added to the inside of their drums so that they could not only be drums, but be maracas, as well.

The next project was one that I have seen multiple times- Kandinsky's circles. The children folded their paper into 8 sections. They used oil pastels to color and add circles. Some of the children decided they didn't want circles and they added hearts, stars and other shapes. 

Our last project of the day was an emotion painting. Each student had a canvas (11x14). There was a selection of acrylic paint, brushes and small sponges on the tables. They were asked to paint using their emotions. There was also music playing, so they were able to use the music as inspiration. The novelty of having their own canvas was inspiration enough for some of the children!

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Fourth Grade African Drums

 This was the last project that the 4th graders did for the year. I will have the finished ones on display at the beginning of the year, when we go back to school in August.

I found the lesson plan on the Crayola website: African Drum

We began the project by looking at different examples of African drums.

Then I had them do a couple of sketches in their sketchbooks to show what they wanted their drum to look like.

They traced 2 circles onto muslin and cut them out. We used fabric markers to color the fabric and then I had them use a pencil to punch holes around the outside of the fabric so that they would be able to string their drum at the end.

The drums were made with 2 bowls. I used paper/cardboard bowls and they colored them with a random assortment of markers that I had collected throughout the year.

I had them punch 2 holes into the bottom of each bowl and then they tied the bowls together, so that they would not move.

When they were ready to string their drum, I had them glue the muslin to the bowl (the first class didn't do this, and had all kinds of difficulty with the fabric moving and falling off) and then they used string that I had left over to string the drums.

The very last step was to paint the fabric with a mixture of glue and water so that it would harden the fabric. Pin It

Third Grade Didgeridoos

The last project that the 3rd graders worked on this year was an Australian didgeridoo.

I started out by reading the book Do You Do a Didgeridoo? to them. It's a very silly, sing song book and they loved it! After that, I showed them a Power Point that I had put together explaining what didgeridoos are, how they are made and at the end, included a YouTube video of an aborigine man playing a real didgeridoo.



After this, we went to the teacher work room and each student got a piece of butcher paper (I let them choose their color). We went back to the room and I had them divide their paper into at least 8 sections. I demonstrated how to fill each section with a Zentangle design using their fine tip black marker (we used quite a few of these- 3rd and 5th grade were both using them and with 200 students using markers, they either dried up or the tips got smashed).


When their designs were completed, I showed them how to take either paper towel rolls or toilet paper rolls (I always haveb large bins outside of my door where students and faculty can drop off any items that they want to recycle, so I had plenty for this project!) and tape them together so that they were long enough for the butcher paper to wrap around.

We used clear packing tape to tape the outside and I have stored these for the summer so that I can put them on display when we go back to school in August.

Unfortunately the pictures are not the best, but hopefully you will get the idea. I think next year, I will give them more than just black markers.....

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Fourth Grade Imaginative Instruments

Materials Needed

• Oil pastels
• Fine line black markers- permanent
• Colored pencils
• Sheet music
• Colored construction paper
• Construction paper crayons
• Colored markers
• Mod podge
• Sketchbooks
 
Other Resources

The Remarkable Farkle McBride- John Lithgow

“Brass Section”- Romare Bearden
“Musical Forms”- Georges Braque

Fourth grade read the book The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow and then made a list of all of the instruments that were presented in the book. Each student chose 2 instruments that interested them (from different families- strings, woodwinds, brass, etc) and practiced drawing them in their sketchbooks using either photos or instruments that I had handy in my room.

 

I showed them how they could create shadows and highlights in a drawing by using color value. Darker values creating the shadows and lighter values creating the highlights. They chose 1 of thier instruments for their project and drew it on a piece of construction paper. They had to draw the same instrument at least 3 more times, but they had to draw it different sizes. When they were finished, they had at least 3 of the same instrument in varying sizes.

 

Each instrument was then colored using a different medium. I had oil pastels, color stix, markers, construction paper crayons, etc for them and demonstrated how each could be used to create the effect that we were looking for.

 

When they colored their instruments, they added shadows and highlights by using tints and shades of color.

 

After each instrument was colored, we used pieces of old music scores and glued these onto our artwork and then covered the composition with a layer of Mod Podge.

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