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Art Supply

Starting from Art

These intermediate art activities allow students to express their creativity through various processes, materials, and elements. Students will explore visual art, music, and drama these lessons.

Map

1

Nature Mandalas

Students will get to know their natural surroundings through using materials to create mandalas. The mandalas will showcase bilateral and radial symmetry.

2

Imagi-nature

In this drama game, students will use their creativity and imagination to turn natural objects into something else.

3

Sit Spot Soundscape

Students will deepen their environmental awareness through engaging with sound and making music. As a class they will create a soundscape based on the sounds they heard.

Nature Mandalas

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Curricular Competencies

Art

  • Choose artistic elements, processes, materials, movements, technologies, tools, techniques and environments using combinations and selections for specific purposes in art making

  • Create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play

  • Reflect on creative processes and make connections to other experiences

  • Connect knowledge and skills from other areas of learning in planning, creating, interpreting, and analyzing works for art

  • Express, feelings, ideas, and experiences in creative ways

  • Describe and respond to works of art and explore artists’ intent

Science

  • Demonstrate curiosity about the natural world

  • Observe objects and events in familiar contexts

  • Express and reflect on personal or shared experiences of place

Math

  • Model mathematics in contextualized experiences

  • Develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving

  • Visualize to explore mathematical concepts

  • Develop and use multiple strategies to engage in problem solving

  • Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms

  1. Tell the students they will be making mandalas (Sanskrit word for circle) using natural objects found outside. Show examples of nature mandalas. Explain bilateral (both sides) and radial (various identical parts) symmetry. 

  2. Take the group outside to a space with lots of natural materials (e.g. sticks, rocks, pinecones, leaves, etc.). Split students into groups of 3-4. Give them 15-20 minutes to make their mandalas.

  3. Encourage students to use various art elements in their mandalas: colours, lines, shapes, and sizes.

  4. Hold a gallery walk to view each groups mandala. As a group, walk around to each mandala: point out details, inspirations, things you might change, and what you used to create it.

 

Extensions: 

  • Draw the same (or different) mandala on paper. How would you draw a mandala to be perfectly symmetrical? What math tools could you use? Use a ruler to measure and mark the lines of symmetry.

Imagi-nature

Curricular Competencies

Art

  • Choose artistic elements, processes, materials, movements, technologies, tools, techniques and environments using combinations and selections for specific purposes in art making

  • Create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play

  • Reflect on creative processes and make connections to other experiences

  • Connect knowledge and skills from other areas of learning in planning, creating, interpreting, and analyzing works for art

  • Express, feelings, ideas, and experiences in creative ways

  • Describe and respond to works of art and explore artists’ intent

Science

  • Demonstrate curiosity about the natural world

  • Observe objects and events in familiar contexts

  • Express and reflect on personal or shared experiences of place

  1. Gather the group outside. Explain that we will be taking a short nature walk as a class. On that nature walk, their job is to pick up one small (size of your hand or smaller) object that stands out to them. 

  2. Bring the students with their objects back to an open space. Put all the objects in the middle and form a sitting circle around them. 

  3. One by one, have students pick one object from the center and use their creativity to reimagine the object as something else. For example: a leaf can be a hat, paper, or tissue. Students then act it out for the class to guess what the natural object has turned into. Take 3 guesses, reveal what it has turned into, then move on to the next student.

  4. Encourage students to reimagine a variety of natural object.

 

Extensions: 

  • Repeat this activity but rather than guessing the object, have students join the actor's scene using another object. For example: student A is using a stick as a broom, student B builds on the scene by holding a leaf as a dustpan. Continue until the scene comes to a natural end.

  • Categorize the objects in the middle, have students come up with their own classification (e.g. by size, shape, colour, uses, location, etc.).

Sit Spot Soundscape

Curricular Competencies

Art

  • Choose artistic elements, processes, materials, movements, technologies, tools, techniques and environments using combinations and selections for specific purposes in art making

  • Create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play

  • Reflect on creative processes and make connections to other experiences

  • Connect knowledge and skills from other areas of learning in planning, creating, interpreting, and analyzing works for art

  • Express, feelings, ideas, and experiences in creative ways

  • Describe and respond to works of art and explore artists’ intent

Science

  • Demonstrate curiosity about the natural world

  • Observe objects and events in familiar contexts

  • Express and reflect on personal or shared experiences of place

Social Studies

  • Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions

  • Construct narratives that capture the attitudes, values, and worldviews commonly held by people at different times or places

  1. Take the students out to a natural area. Explain space boundaries. Tell the students they are going to sit in a spot for 5 minutes. Their job is to pick a sound they hear, something they will be able to mimic.

  2. Have them find their own sit spots (away from others and silently) to listen and pick a sound. 

  3. Come back together and sit in a circle. One at a time, students will make the sound they chose (without telling others what the sound is). 

  4. Once everyone in the circle has made their sound once, start the soundscape waterfall. Starting with one student making their sound, have the person beside them start, then the next, and so on until all students are making their sound at once. 

  5. Stop and discuss: contrasting/ complimentary sounds and natural peaks/ troughs in the soundscape. What sounds are standing out? How can we make the soundscape sound more cohesive? Does it accurately reflect the natural environment you heard them in?

 

Extensions: 

  • Try the soundscape again. This time invite students to think of an action that goes with that sound (e.g. cawing while flapping wings). How did adding actions change the soundscape? 

  • Play a soundscape found online (e.g. ocean waves, rainforest, busy street). Have students draw a scene that matches the soundscape. Ask students to listen very carefully as quieter sounds are harder to hear in soundscapes. What happens when you listen to a soundscape for a longer period of time? Do you hear something different?

  • Discuss: Why might people of different cultures, age, or regions, hear different things when listening to the same soundscape? How does a soundscape connect you to a place or memory? 

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