Calder Meets Hundertwasser

I am SO excited to get to school tomorrow to start this week's project because I had such fun playing with the idea at home!

Last summer I went to a cool exhibit of Alexander Calder at a small museum in Newport Beach. As a result, I was determined to have at least one of my classes experiment with kinetic sculpture. As soon as I got home I started playing with wire and matt board -- what fun that was!! Until last year, I had not heard of Friedensreich Hundertwasser and I also wanted to incorporate some of his style with circles into a project. My collection of donated matt board (black on one side and white on the other) finally has grown to the point that I have enough to create our sculpture, so 5th graders will be starting this project this week.

We'll spend a little time observing and discussing works of Calder and Hundertwasser with a Smartboard doc. that I created. Next, they will start with 2 pre-cut pieces of matt board. I am asking them to make line designs on the white side of one of the boards to increase the impression of vertical height of the piece. They will notch each of these pieces to make them stand.

Kids will be using the color wheel to help them create circle designs with complementary colors. The circles that will be attached to the edges of the board are hinged by drawing their edge on the fold of the white paper. That way fronts and backs will match up when glued.  I am asking students to make a minimum of 3 of these hinged circles and as many single sided circles as they like.

The kinetic part of the sculpture will be created with another 2 hinged circles and a piece of 24 gauge wire. They will use a push pin to create the hole for the wire.

To stabilize the base, we'll cut a narrow piece of black card stock to glue on the bottom and then the whole structure will be glued to a 6" X 6" piece of board. I hope to have them ready to post later this week!!!!