Time for Functional Art

Essential  Question: What is functional art? To me this is a really FUN unit to do! Because it proves ART IS EVERYWHERE!!

 

I have done functional art with my students in the past. They made benches and lunch boxes but this was the first time I thought about having them make clocks.

AND as always I had all these different things going on in my head-Monday's classes missed mixing purple-so they should use only red, blue and white to paint their clocks. Another day I thought the students should learn about mixing green, they used only blue, yellow and white. White was added as a little mini lesson on value.  Finally I gave out red, yellow, blue and white and let them play....... Silly me, just should have done that in the first place, duh.  Bonus-they were in awe of the colors that they made!

 

My inspiration piece for this project was this clay clock I bought on vacation-so long ago that I don't remember where. Students were quite curious as to how to tell time with no numbers on the clock!

For my little k/1st grade students I read them this big book, which they loved. We talked about what the little and big hands tell us. We talked about where the numbers go on the face , whether you can see them or not, the numbers are always there.

 

The first day of the lesson they painted on the bottom of those really good Chinet plates. The second day of the lesson, we talked about where the numbers go on the face of the clock. They were given a choice as to whether to cut out and glue on numbers or write numbers on them. I also had them use Sharpies to detail their work and have their art POP!

 

I had student volunteers make a hole in the middle of each plate. (They used a template to poke the hole through.) Then the little ones were able to assemble the hands with a paper fastener. (The hands were pre-cut with holes-again, thanks to my student volunteers.)

Sorry, my budget does not include the money to actually make these clocks tick..... However, I did let students know it was something that could be done with a kit from one of the craft stores.

I did a variation of this lesson with my older students, which I promise to share next time!

Meanwhile, thanks for reading! By the way- how do you teach your students about functional art?