4th Grade - Folk Monsters

I love this project.  It's so much fun from beginning to end, and the ideas the 4th graders come up with are unique, creative, and often hilarious.

I first introduce the kids to a handful of monsters from ancient japanese folk tales.  These monsters have a variety of functions in the stories:  some explain some science about the world (earthquakes or monsoons), some teach a valuable lesson (take care of your shoes, clean your bathroom), and some are just plain strange (one monster creeps around and cuts your hair for no apparent reason).  After the introduction, the fourth graders are free to come up with their own monster, and, in their picture, give clues about what the monster does.  See if you can guess in the pictures below.

1st Grade - Class Creatures

Class Creatures is one of my favorite projects for a lot of reasons, and almost none of them have anything to do with how the product turns out.  This one's all about interpretation and how we can challenge ourselves to make each artwork as unique as possible.  First, each class votes on some characteristics that all of their creatures will share.  Color, size, habitat, etc.  Then, we focus on drawing a creature that has all of those characteristics while also working hard to make sure that we add some stuff in to make our drawing completely different from everyone else's.

Sure, we voted for our creature to live on land, but where on land?  Some land creatures might live in a house, or a cave, or a volcano, or in the art room.  The project leaves tons of room for the kids to come up with their own ideas while still sharing with their classmates.  They also get super excited about some of the differences they come up with that are totally random and often hilarious.  Check out a few examples!

4th Grade - Folk Monsters

Another new one for this year, for this project we explored some Japanese legends, specifically the yokai, then made up our own.  We discussed a lot of different types of these folk monsters and considered their reason for existing.  When we created our own, we made sure that each one had a purpose, or did something unique.

It's really open-ended projects like these that really make me excited to be an art teacher.  The ideas the fourth graders came up with are so off-the-well and creative, it was hard to narrow down when I was taking pictures for the blog post here.  Take a look.