Plains Indian Teepees

                        Second grade has been studying the Plains Indians.  The students loved drawing buffalo and thinking about how the indians used every part of them.  They loved drawing teepees and thinking about life on the prairie and the symbols on the teepees.    When it was time to think about a painting project, the students agreed... teepees.

                         Here are some finished paintings.....

Plains Indian Teepee Paintings

Student-written Process

"We were studying about Indians in our classrooms.  In art,  we drew a teepee, a buffalo, and a pueblo.  We really liked the teepee.  We looked at a lot of pictures of teepees.   We thought teepees would be cool to live in and we loved the symbols on them.  The Plains Indians liked animals and so there were a lot of animal symbols on their teepees. 

         We needed a plan for painting.  We thought about our sketches.  The sketches took a long time, because they were easy and hard at the same time.  The teepee triangle was easy and the animal symbols were hard.

We learned how to make a painting, step by step.   We sketched the teepees with pencil very lightly right on the canvas.  We painted the teepee first.     Then we painted the background.    We all had different backgrounds.  We had to add more painting layers when we messed up.   We painted the entire canvas including the edges.  We came to the art room 3 or 4 times.  We made sure all the paint was done before we did the designs on the teepees.   The symbols were so fun, some of us did too many.  We couldn’t stop."

artist statements

“As an artist, I liked it but it got a little hard when you had to draw stuff over or paint over.  It was frustrating but it turned out kinda cool.   It looks really good hanging on the wall.”  

“It was a good project.  I like being a good artist because it’s creative.  We got to add our own details so they weren’t like everyone else’s.” 

“This was amazing because we made cool symbols that we wanted on the teepee.”

“When you get to do your own detail, it feels relaxing.”

Ceiling Constellations

 by 4th graders

Process

        

         Ms. McGill and Ms. Mary Lou wanted to paint ceiling tiles for the library ceiling.  Ms. McGill thought the night sky would be fun.  And then the project began.

The first thing we did for our constellation project was that we got our partners. Then we got our constellations. Mrs. McGill, and Mrs. Mary Lou passed out our constellations. Third, we drew a sketch. Fourth, we did a planning page where we put what the constellation represents, number of stars, when it is visible, and the myth behind it. We had to understand how the stars went around the earth or how the earth rotates to see the stars and when we would see them.  Fifth, we did some research for our planning page and our constellation document A.K.A. our myth. We had to read the myths, figure out what we read and put it into our own words.

Then we painted ceiling tiles to make our mini sky for the library. This part was really fun.  First we painted black.  It was hard to get it into all the holes and then we thought the tiny holes looked like stars so we stopped worrying about it.  We painted blue and purple and tried to get it to look like the night sky. A couple friends said that glow in the dark stars would be fun. 

Next (sixth) we glued our stars onto our tile to represent our constellation. Seventh, we printed out our myths which were two fat paragraphs and cut out the constellation pictures that were printed and glued our constellation pictures, constellation myths, and pictures we drew onto a gray piece of paper. Then next (eighth) we made our artist statements.

Another Part of the Process

            When we started this project, we were stressed out.  We wanted to do it alone and not together.  Now we’re really happy we did work together because it brought us closer.  We had fun working together (when we started to work together).  We had some difficult times but our paper turned out really good.  We both had arguments about the research and the writing but we worked it out.

            It turned out to be very fun and exciting!

Artist Statements

         “We had a lot of fun.  It took 5 days to make.  I made an awesome drawing.”

         “I think the myth was very cool.”

         “It was a lot more fun than I thought.  I really liked painting the ceiling boards.  We started out splattering blue, black and purple then we put the stars where they belong.”

         “The thing that was hard was that we didn’t want to work together but we did and it was fun.”

         “I really liked this project especially the drawing part.”

         “Mission complete”

Draco, the Dragon 

I can't wait to see the glow in the dark stars in the library ceiling.