Folk art and Folk Tale- Mexican Tin Ornaments and "The Woman Who Outshone the Sun"

 A stunning bird- I was very interested in how she added the papers on the side to compliment her piece. Wasn't that  great idea?!

 One student added a small sun that could be rotated around a brad ;).

 This student cut their tin up and made movable parts by connecting it with brads.

                                            

This was such an enjoyable lesson for me! I grew up in San Antonio, Texas and have quite an
attachment to Mexico so teaching my students a little bit about Mexican culture was wonderful.

We started by discussing fairy tales and why cultures create and retell fairy tales. We read the Zapotec legend, "The Woman Who Outshone the Sun". It's a beautiful tale about Lucia Zenteno, a stunning but different woman who was driven out of her village because the people did not like her. It was a great story to talk about respecting each other even when we are different from each other (LOVE it!!). We also discussed what type of animals, tress, plants and landscape we saw in the book.

 Next I talked with them about Mexican tin ornaments and what kind of images Mexican craftsman would use on their ornaments and why. I shared with them how geometric patterns were used in Lucia Zenteno's time as well as today.

The kids all chose something from the book as a starting point. I supplied many of them with pictures of iguanas, fish and other animals indigenous to Mexico that they saw in the story. They carefully drew their subject on small paper.

I think the best part for them was learning how to use a stylus. Thanks to NintendoDS, many of them already knew the word stylus ;). They transferred their drawings onto sheets of tin using the stylus. After they completed their outlines I encouraged them to add lots and lots of details so they would get a really good grasp of embossing into the metal. When the embossing was complete they used permanent markers to add color.

Many of the kids built little frames with cut up paper and markers around their tin pieces. They loved using brads to attach the tin!

I hope the kids enjoyed learning about Mexico, ancient fairy tales and learning how to emboss metal as much as I loved sharing it with them! I hope this coming year we can get more elaborate with the metal and make larger pieces.

Tissue Paper flowers

I am slowly going through my pictures of our projects throughout the year....hopefully I get them all up over the summer! These are pictures of the flower hairpieces that we made in May. We made them in the colors of the Mexican flag to go hand in hand with our wonderful Spanish teacher's end of year lessons.

During our Spring Showcase the girls wore these in their hair when they performed a traditional Mexican dance they learned. I am usually not a crafty art teacher and I typically don't like step by step instructions (although it's a great thing for kids to learn to follow directions.....I just use my 45 minutes a week with them for creativity ;)) but it gave me the opportunity to discuss the difference between fine art, craft and folk art. It also gave me a ton of inspiration and I launched a Mexican folk art lesson after this flower project (more on that later).

Working with the tissue paper was pretty tricky so it was a good experience for them to cut such lightweight paper, staple it and manipulate it. Needless to say, most of the boys weren't thrilled to make flowers ;). I struck a deal that if they made one flower they could use the rest of the art period to go back to working on their snow leopard masks. Worked like a charm!!