6-8 Band Activities
Art
SAS Big Ideas:
- The skills, techniques, elements and principles of the arts can be learned, studied, refined and practiced.
- Artists use tools and resources as well as their own experiences and skills to create art.
- The arts provide a medium to understand and exchange ideas.
- People have expressed experiences and ideas through the arts throughout time and across cultures.
- There are formal and informal processes used to assess the quality of works in the arts.
- People use both aesthetic and critical processes to assess quality, interpret meaning and determine value.
Deborah Butterfield Sculpture
Objective: Students will explore environmental art while being introduced to the artworks of Deborah Butterfield.
- Pre-visit: Consider how artists are inspired. Environmental artists are inspired by nature. Many of these capture and share this essence of nature with their viewers through use of materials and how artists try to art is displayed. Deborah Butterfield collects sticks from nature to create her life size horse sculptures. Look at some of her work as a class. Do you see other materials incorporated into her work? While in the Artmobile, explore how artists are combining natural elements. Deborah Butterfield Horse Images
- Post-visit: Review the artwork from the Artmobile exhibit. Consider yourself as an environmental artist. Using artworks from the exhibit as inspiration create a sculpture from natural elements of a combination of elements. Consider use of color to add contrast or create focus on specific areas of your sculpture.
Arts and Crafts Movement
Objective: Students will investigate and discuss function of form and compare it to aesthetic attributes while designing furniture.
- Pre-visit: Watch the video for the Arts and Crafts Movement and the life of Gustav Stickley. Discuss how the art and design behind the creation of common goods occurs. Investigate how artists have shaped their classrooms. Discuss the importance of functional art also displaying aesthetic attributes.
- Post-visit: Review pieces from the Artmobile exhibit Tree to Form. Discuss which objects were functional and whether they thought they would work well. Compare the use of the art form to the aesthetics. Keeping this in mind create a design for new piece of furniture for your bedroom. Consider functional and aesthetic during drafting.
Language Arts
SAS Big Ideas:
- Information to gain or expand knowledge can be acquired through a variety of sources.
- Effective speaking and listening are essential for productive communication.
Moody Wood
Objective: Students will determine mood in their writing style as a reaction to their observations.
- Pre-visit: Very often art work expresses feelings of mood just as writing does. The Artmobile exhibit this year is titled Tree to Form. It encompasses a wide interpretation of artists transforming a basic element, wood, to an expressive art form. Consider how nature in itself changes the mood through the seasons. Trees change drastically from season to season. Choose a season and write about the mood a tree may be expressing. Think about various points of view you could write from and how even the voice of your writing can change to mood of the story.
- Post-visit: Choose a work of art from the show and consider its mood. Write a story or narrative based on that chosen work of art. Present to the class to see if they can determine which artwork you have written about. Be sure to speak in the mood of your writing.
Drawing with Words
Objective: Using the glossary as a guide, students will create a word collage based on a tool that communicates an image of the tool or an image of the tool in action.
- Pre-visit: Discuss the types of tools students may see in the Artmobile. Use the glossary as a reference. Ask students if they are familiar with their functions. Identify how a tool may be used or where, i.e. in a workshop, outside, while in modern times or the past.
- Post-visit: Relate back to the tools discussed from the Artmobile exhibit Tree to Form. Choose a tool to focus on. Lightly use a pencil to create a sketch of the environment one may use this tool or of the tool itself. Cut action and descriptive words from magazines to fill in your drawing with. Display your word drawings.
Math
SAS Big Ideas:
- Some questions can be answered by collecting, representing, and analyzing data, and the question to be answered determines the data to be collected, how best to collect it, and how best to represent it.
- The likelihood of an event occurring can be described numerically and used to make predictions.
- Two variable quantities are proportional if their values are in a constant ratio. The relationship between proportional quantities can be represented as a linear function.
- Relations and functions are mathematical relationships that can be represented and analyzed using words, tables, graphs, and equations.
- Similarity relationships between objects are a form of proportional relationships. Congruence describes a special similarity relationship between objects and is a form of equivalence.
Scale, Form and Proportion
Objective: Students will plan a scaled model of a marble run and demonstrate it in action.
- Pre-visit: Engineers draft diagrams just as artists create idea sketches in their sketchbooks prior to creation. From the sketches, small models are sometimes made to observe ideas in a third dimension. This is especially true when creating large scale works. Artists investigate how to scale their models based on proportion and form. While in the Artmobile, consider which works used small models to expand planning and which works you believe simply started with a sketch or diagram. Does the size have a role in your decision?
- Post-visit: Refer to the marble run videos listed here. These works required careful planning to create. Have students work individually or as a team to create their own marble runs. Students should begin with a sketch or a drafted plan. Determine the likelihood of your marble reaching the end of the run while planning. Based on your predictions, make any necessary adjustments to your plan prior to building. Working from their drawing, create the run using cardboard, paper towel tubes, and or foam board. Present runs to the class.
The Geometry of Carving
Objective: Students will investigate carving as an art form and recognize the need for math and geometric calculations during the planning and execution of their own carving.
- Pre-visit: Carving is an art form that requires careful calculations of angles and configurations of geometric planes. Look at carvings while in the Artmobile. When artists plan carvings they need to think of the material in layers. Each layer they remove creates impact in form. This takes precise planning and requires drawings and drafting notes to remain accurate. It is easy to observe this when looking at the space left behind from where material has been removed. Find geometric forms and various angles in the negative space created by removing material.
- Post-visit: Consider space of the objects from the Artmobile exhibit Tree to Form. Create a soap or balsa wood carving as a response to form. Start by creating a drawing of your ideas using geometric planes and angles while planning. Look at the rough form of your idea and begin to sculpt it by cutting away soap or balsa wood using an angled Popsicle stick or a plastic knife. If you really trust your students, you can introduce sharper tools such as xacto knives. However, the carving works well using plastic knives and Popsicle sticks. Once the rough out is complete, use a sharpened pencil to engrave details onto your sculpture.
Science
SAS Big Ideas:
- Matter has observable physical properties and the potential to mix and form new materials.
- The cell is the basic unit of structure and function for all living things.
- Living things depend on their habitat to meet their basic needs.
- The survival of living things is dependent upon their adaptations and ability to respond to natural changes in and human influences on the environment.
- The health of all living things is directly related to the quality of the environment.
- People acting individually and/or as groups influence the environment.
Characteristics of Natural Elements
Objective: Students will inventory natural materials based on texture and other physical characteristics.
- Pre-visit: Take a nature walk as a class and collect a variety of materials and objects. While back in the classroom, discuss the physical properties of objects and inventory them by groups based on size and texture. The Artmobile exhibit Tree to Form is filled with artworks of all sizes and textures. See how many different textures you can find.
- Post-visit: Using the inventory from the previsit activity, create a texture board to display as many different textures as you can find in nature. Examples of texture include rough, smooth, bumpy, jagged, prickly, furry, fuzzy, spiky, slippery, etc...
Density and Climate
Objective: Students will differentiate between density and wood types and extrapolate the role of climactic influences.
- Pre-visit: Wood is a dense material. Discuss how density changes depending on wood type. Artists that are beginning carvers, use less dense wood which is softer and easier to carve or dent. Skilled artists and furniture makers use denser woods that will be more durable and less likely to scratch. This type of wood is excellent to use on a turner's lathe. While in the Artmobile, look at the turned bowls and determine the type of wood they are made from.
- Post-visit: Using data collection, explore wood types and determine their density. Plot this information on a graph. Investigate further to explore natural causes for denser trees. Collect data on climate of high to low density woods. Add this information to the graph. Compare findings. Is there cause and effect? Resource: Response of Tree Ring Density to Climate in Maine, USA.
Social Studies
SAS Big Ideas:
- Historical context is needed to comprehend time and space.
- Historical interpretation involves an analysis of cause and result.
- The history of the Commonwealth continues to influence Pennsylvanians today, and has impacted the United States and the rest of the world.
- The history of the United States continues to influence its citizens, and has impacted the rest of the world.
- World history continues to influence Pennsylvanians, citizens of the United States, and individuals throughout the world today.
History of Wood in Bucks County, PA
Objective: Students will construct a chain of events time line and relate information to their classmates of historical Bucks County in regards to wood working.
- Pre-visit: Look at writings from historical resources such as The History of Bucks County to create a timeline of the evolution of wood working throughout the19th century to present day.
- Post-visit: Investigate further some of the early names in Bucks County wood working history such as William Mawson, John B. Poore, William H. White, Dr. Noah S. Nonamaker, St. Francis' Industrial School, Elias Deemer, William Edgar Geil, and the Scarborough Family. Resource: The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania; From the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time by William Watts Hart Davis (Oct 14, 2010)
Explore the Center for Art in Wood
Objective: Students will gain knowledge of community resources through the exploration of the Center for Art in Wood.
- Pre-visit: Most of the works on exhibit in Tree to Form are on loan by artists from the Center for Art in Wood of Philadelphia. As an introduction to the exhibit, explore their website with special attention to the Collections. Identify who they are and where they are located while visiting their website page Who We Are.
- Post-visit: The Museum Collection at the Center for Art in Wood features changing exhibits of hand made objects and published materials the Collection serves to conserve, interpret, and present the history and evolution of wood turning from an industrial craft into a contemporary art form. Through the study of these items, one can observe the diverse ways that craft workers make products for daily use, how artists express themselves, and how authors have documented the craft of wood turning and the contemporary art of creating sculpture from wood and other materials. Explore the collections of the wood turning center and write or present a response to the collections. Center for Art in Wood Gallery.