The fourth and fifth graders learned about Surrealism for this project. I started by showing them how to set up their houses using colored construction paper. These pictures were LARGE.. the size of a posterboard. The individual colored construction papers were 9×12″. Each child started with 4 sheets of colored construction paper to set up their house. Then, they flipped through magazines to cut out furniture and items for their houses. After they had found a bunch of furniture, I introduced Surrealism to them through a slide show of art. We discussed concepts such as dislocation (placing things were they don’t belong), scale and size changes to create unusual relations and metamorphosis (changing things into something new). They learned about artists such as Magritte, Dali and contemporary artist Sandy Skoglund.
The students had a fantastic time cutting apart magazine imagery and playing with different objects to create an unusual and surreal house.
Some of the detail shots were even more interesting than the entire image as a whole.
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| For example, this dog with a party hat and corn? so fun! |
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| Placing a bear head on top of a man? hilarious! |
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| Some of the students used colored tape to divide up the house into rooms and add stairs or ladders. |
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| This student cut up lots of landscape imagery to make a background. |
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| I love this interesting scene. |
TIPS: When I do this next year, I will request some furniture catalogs.. IKEA catalogs would have been perfect for this. The kids loved to use animal pictures, so I might have requested some animal magazines from families as well.
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Cute project. Have you ever shown your kids the video 'Get Surreal with Salvador Dali'? It's great -30 minutes long and every second is worthwhile – and it explains concepts like dislocation, juxtaposition, and more, all presented in a surreal fashion (there are flying mustaches, among other things) and is narrated by two kids.
Det ser veldig pen og presentert veldig bra. Du har gjort det veldig bra jobb. Hats off deg.
huskatalog
Phyl, thanks so much for the suggestion. I will have to check that out! Brodahl, thanks for stopping by my blog. I don't know what you said, but thanks for commenting!
These look cool! I love to use pottery barn catalogues for this lesson. I do a similar one you can see at room9art: I believe the label says “surrealism”. I have older kids so they make the house using popsicle sticks glued to a big paper; looking in from the side like the open back of a doll house. Keep up the great posts! Jana AKA One little deer