Week of 2/13/22 - Alma Thomas and Gee's Bend - 2nd and 3rds

 2nd graders looked at the works of Alma Thomas and engaged in a class discussion about what they notice and wonder.

We talked about her painting technique, choice of bold colors, her inspiration, and her quote in an interview with the New York Times - “One of the things we couldn’t do was go into museums, let alone think of hanging our pictures there. My, times have changed. Just look at me now.”

Each student picked a simple shape like a heart, square, circle etc. or if they wished to challenge themselves, they picked a landscape or rainbow. I demonstrated how to dip the paintbrush in tempera paint to create rectangular marks to fill in their drawing while lifting their paintbrush before making the next mark.

 We ended the lesson by having a class discussion about what questions students would ask Alma Thomas now that they had a chance to paint in her style. Here are some responses!

3rd grade students created a quilt inspired by the quilts from Gee's Bend. We looked at several examples and talked about the significance of these quilts, the contrasting colors, different layers sewn together, the community aspect of creating these quilts and the shapes present. 

 

 Each 3rd grade class received a paper in a specific color combination that they cut and arranged on 4 rectangle pieces and them glued them to create their own quilt. We also had a written piece to explain something new each student learned in this lesson.