5th grade Aboriginal Rainsticks

5th graders are finishing up their year by going back to Australian art! (We finally collected enough pringles cans to do the project). We looked at Australian dot art and considered how their paintings and rainsticks were used in their aboriginal culture. We then painted a dot painting in a similar style and color scheme, pushed nails through a pringles can, filled it with rice beans and such, then used art paste to mache it all together! We are making music in here!

1st Grade Aboriginal Snake Dot Painting

1st graders are studying the life and art of the Australian Aboriginees. We looked at the country of Australia, the historical Aboriginee lifestyle, and the many types of paintings that they were known for. We noticed how they often painted dotted animals that were important to their ancestral stories. We chose the story of the snake and drew him with aboriginal inspired patterns and a very "dotty" background!

1st Grade Aboriginal X-ray Fish

1st graders are studying the life and art of the Australian Aboriginees. We looked at the country of Australia, the historical Aboriginee lifestyle, and the many types of paintings that were common for them.  We looked especially at the x-ray style painting that was used to paint animals and people often on the inside of cave walls. They would paint the outside of the animal and the inside at the same time like an x-ray. 

We traced our shoes for the shape of fish and then drew them in an x-ray style. We used Aboriginal types of colors to color the patterns and decorated the frame in an Aboriginal style tribal band.

3rd grade Aboriginal Figure Drawing Dot Paintings

3rd graders graders are studying the life and art of the Australian Aboriginees. We looked at the country of Australia, the historical Aboriginee lifestyle, and the many styles and designs in typical Aboriginal paintings. We noticed how they often used many dots and spirals in their work. We then combined this lesson with our figure drawing lesson to create these Aboriginal dancers on the Aboriginal style background. We looked at the proportions of the human body and had students pose as models in various styles to help draw the many dancing positions. 

4th Grade Aboriginal Bark Paintings

4th graders are studying the life and art of the Australian Aboriginees. We looked at the country of Australia, the historical Aboriginee lifestyle, and the many styles of Aboriginal painting. We noticed how the Aboriginees painted on the ground, on rainsticks, boomerangs, and even on bark! The subject matter of their art was often animals that were special to their ancestral stories. They also often used many dots and patterns it their art. 

We were inspired by their painting style and drew our own patterned animals on crumpled bark paper! We then used Q-tips to create the decorative dots on the frame. 

2nd Grade Cave Art of the Australian Aboriginees

2nd Grade artists are studying the life and art of the Australian Aboriginees. We looked at the country of Australia, the historical Aboriginee lifestyle, and the appearance of cave art in the Outback. We also looked at the types of cave art that have appeared in other places in the world and talked about why they painted the things they did. We saw how they used their own handprints as a type of signature on their artworks. We created our own handprint signatures with cave art designs and a patterned frame! 

Aboriginal Patterned Metal Masks!

5th graders are studying the life and art of the Australian Aboriginees. We looked at the country of Australia, the historical Aboriginee lifestyle, and the uses of the Aboriginal Mask in history. We then drew our own relief masks into foil, painted them black, wiped off the black paint to create an old look with the black filling in the lines, and then used Aboriginal inspired patterns to decorate the frames!