Mexican Animalitos

5th grade "traveled" to Mexico earlier this year and learned about Oaxacan wood carvers and their beautiful and whimsical animal carvings.   These remarkable wood carvings are also known as alebrijes for their similarity with the fantastic paper creatures made in Mexico City.  

We made ours out of air-dry clay. And painted them with acrylics.  I absolutely love how they turned out!  I wanted to keep many of them for my own.  If you want to see some of the real things, click here.  One day, I plan on owning one of these beauties! 

Soul-Sole Pendants

Kindergarten made some lovely gifts for Christmas. We talked about words that sound the same but are spelled and mean something different. They knew that their soul is something inside of them and a sole is part of your shoe. We used both of our souls/soles to create these pendants. We but out souls into painting them. And used the soles of our shoes to create the designs. After carefully stepping on a ball of clay we added some pretty beads and waited for them to dry. We even made handmade wrapping paper to wrap them up for Christmas!

Egyptian Cartouche Jewelry: 6th Grade

Sixth Grade learned about Ancient Egypt in both Social Studies and Art! In art class, we looked at Egyptian jewelry and hieroglyphics. In this ancient writing characters surrounded by a oval ending in a bar on the bottom is called a cartouche. This denotes a name. We carved out our names and turned these cartouches into Egyptian jewelry.