Unit 4: Celebrations
Nick Cave: Clay Finger Puppets
This project taught us about celebrations because we were given an opportunity to celebrate something about ourselves. I feel like in our society we are always trying to better and change ourselves which can be great, but I really liked having the opportunity to just appreciate something about ourselves that was worth celebrating. I used this puppet as a way to celebrate my dancing. On the dance team I joined this year, I have grown a lot and improved my skills, but I have also improved my confidence. This was especially true when I showed my team my own choreography for the first time. I made a peacock puppet to represent that even though it can be scary, when I take the stage and become the center of attention, it helps me grow. I think this would be such a cool activity to do for literacy. I actually remember doing an activity very similar to this when I was in second grade. We had fifth grade buddies and we each picked a fairy tale, made puppets (out of paper mache, but could use clay), and then put on a puppet show version of the story. It was such a fun memorable experience that I would love to bring into my classroom. Another idea I had to incorporate celebrations would be to choose a celebration of a specific culture and have students make a puppet of a person from that culture and depict what they would wear during a certain celebration. This would integrate social studies very well.
Norman Rockwell Celebrating 21st Century America: Graphic Design
This project was a great way to celebrate 21st century America using pictures and text in the form of a magazine cover. I chose to look at how young people today in America are still concerned with helping others, even traveling to other countries to do so. I chose to use three pictures from a mission trip I went on this winter break with other Mizzou students to St. Vincent (an island in the Caribbean). My pictures focused on our group building a preschool for local children, and cooking dinner for students at the local bible college. I think college students reaching out to help others in today's world is definitely something to celebrate! I think this would be a really cool project to use for social studies if kids are learning about time periods. They could make a magazine cover celebrating life during colonial times, life in the roaring twenties, or life during the great depression. They could also make magazine covers like this to capture the essence of other cultures and what is important to them in their countries.
Miriam Shapiro: Artist's Choice
This project connected to celebration for me because I was celebrating female role models. I chose to celebrate my aunt in this piece because she is a huge inspiration for me and has helped shape who I am today. I used a picture of her and put her in fun patterned clothes because she is very trendy. I used wax resist and water color to paint the stars and the moon in the night sky to represent a story she wrote and showed me about a star for encouragement at a hard time in my life. I used many pictures of nature below that because she loves spending time in nature, taking pictures, and using this space to grow spiritually. I think this project would be a great prompt for science because so many famous scientists are men and women in science are not given nearly as much credit. I could have students research and find a woman who contributed to science, and create an art project representing her to go along with the information they find.