Positive Negative Notan

In this lesson I had the kids experimenting with positive and negative shapes. In Japan this is called Notan, and you typically start with single square of black paper. Every shape that you cut out, you flip and mirror it outwards, so it can get quite complicated. It teaches the kids about shape, as well as positive and negative shapes.

To check out all the art photos click here. 

For the K-1 kids, I did  similar but different project that involved them making single cuts across a paper in a variety of shapes and then gluing them down with some negative space between them.

Halloween pumpkins

For the younger kids, I did a Halloween project that got great results a few years back: Positive / negative pumpkins with orange and black paper.

The key is having the kids learn that they can just draw half the jack-o-lantern on one piece and cut it out and then reverse it onto the other paper.

Quite a concept for the Kinders!  But they had much more fun results than I imagined. Very cool stuff!

The Kindergarteners:

The 1st-4th graders

Week 8: Pumpkin reflections

This week our little school of 50 kids had 18+ kids out with the flu (swine or other white meat, not sure?)  Our family of 5 had 4 of us down, but I was well enough to do art with the 3rd and 4th graders. My class of 21 had 12 in it.  I had intended to do something Halloween-y with black paper and colored pastels or pencils, but the idea lacked punch so I borrowed this great idea from the  Art Projects from Kids blog. Thanks!

Its a pretty simple but great idea. You take a half sheet of black paper and draw, then cutout, a half pumpkin. You then take the pieces you have made and flip/mirror them over. If you glue these onto a colored piece you get a great positive/negative lesson. To embellish it, I still had the kids use yellow or white or orange colored pencil to draw spider webs, cats, bats, moons etc.

For the most part, they really understood the concept, with just a bit of help. Some of the kids "altered" the idea and used more paper and made a black and white side to put on a colored sheet, and that looked cool as well. Great job and a real nice Halloween decoration. I even suggested to the kids that they might want to take this idea home and try it for a Christmas Tree or silly face.  I could see the lightbulbs in some of the kid's heads!  This started out to be a makeshift concept, but it turned out to be one of the best.

I often feel like the kids lift me up when I'm feeling a bit down or uninspired. Thanks kids!