Sunday, September 27, 2009

Kokopelli, 5th Grade

The fifth graders were learning about Native Americans, and I needed to come up with a lesson with this theme. I know that normally this is a common theme for art projects, but I just could not find anything I liked.

After much googling, I had an idea. I kept seeing this image of a man playing an instrument on the Internet. I looked into it, and found that his name is Kokopelli and it is a Southwestern Native American legend dating back to over 3,000 years ago. According to the legend, Kokopelli plays his instrument to change the seasons. Kokopelli usually is slightly hunch backed and generally has wild hair. I just loved this image and decided to dedicate a project after him.

Students used oil pastel and liquid watercolors for the background. For the image of Kokopelli, students drew and cut it out of black paper. (I showed students basically how to draw him, but details like his hair were up to the students) This was then glued on top the painted paper.







I just love how these turned out. This lesson is definitely a keeper. :)



2 comments:

  1. Super cool art lesson, the kids did a great job!

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  2. Thanks. I'm glad you like it. My student's loved this lesson. Now the students recognize the image of Kokopelli, they are comming to school telling me about all the places they have spotted his image. (like on Tshirts, restraunts, art shows...)

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