Mandalas

Last week in art, all of my students learned about the ancient Asian artform of creating mandalas.  Mandala actually means "circle" in Sanskrit (an ancient Indian written language).  However, mandalas are much more intricate and meaningful than that.  Mandalas are often used to focus attention and deliniate a sacred space. 

 After looking at many variations of mandalas, we talked about concentric circles and radial symmetry. 

Some Tibetan Buddhists create painstakingly detailed mandalas out of sand (like the one below).

I gave each student a 9 x 9 square piece of heavy weight watercolor paper (90 pound).  First students drew a large circle.  Then, they divided the circle into 4 equal quadrants.  Then, the students added identical lines and shapes in each of the four quadrants; therefore crearting a concentric circle filled with a radialy symmetrical pattern.  The results?  Well, see for yourself!

Behavior Color Palette

In my classroom, I have a behavior color palette for each class that comes to art.  Each palette has their classroom teacher's name at the top with an empty palette and 8 color splats at the bottom.  Each time they come to art, a class has an opportunity to earn a color splat on their palette (the goal is to fill their palette with color by earning all 8 color splats)!  I used velcro to attach the splats.  When a class fills their palette with all 8 splats, they earn a free art day.  That means that we might go outside and do earth art, we might watch an art movie, or play an art game.  Some of the games we have played in the pass include art hangman and pin the ear on Van Gogh.