Folk Art of India

During the month of November students of Clara Barton learned about the holiday Diwali and created a variety of art projects related to traditional folk art in India. Diwali is the five-day festival of lights, celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world. The festival, which coincides with the Hindu New Year, celebrates new beginnings and the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness.

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CONNECTING TO THE VISUAL ARTS STANDARDS
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Anchor Standard 10: Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.
 
Essential Question: How can making art help us learn and reflect on community and cultural traditions?
 
VA:Cn10.1.Ka
VA:Cn10.1.2a

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STUDENT ARTWORK SLIDESHOW

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ART LESSON INFORMATION

Warli Art
Kindergarten -2nd Grade Project

Creative Process
Using white crayons and oil pastels on brown paper Kindergarten and first grade students created Warli style artwork depicting people, nature, and houses using symbolic geometric shapes.

Warli painting is a style of tribal art mostly created by the tribal people from the North Sahyadri Range in India. The simple pictorial language of Warli painting is matched by a rudimentary technique. The ritual paintings are usually created on the inside walls of village huts. The walls are made of a mixture of branches, earth and red brick that make a red ochre background for the paintings. The Warli only paint with a white pigment made from a mixture of rice paste and water, with gum as a binder. A bamboo stick is chewed at the end to give it the texture of a paintbrush. Walls are painted only to mark special occasions such as weddings or harvests.

Worksheets and Resources

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ANIMALS OF INDIA
Kindergarten -3rd Grade Project
Using pencils, permanent markers, oil pastels, construction paper crayons, watercolor pencils and watercolors students in 2nd grade through 5th grade are making realistic pictures of animals that live in India that feature a variety of textures and perspectives!

DID YOU KNOW THAT A PEACOCK IS THE NATIONAL BIRD OF INDIA?

DID YOU KNOW THAT A TIGER IS THE NATIONAL MAMMAL OF INDIA?

Worksheets & Resources

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Mehendi Designs
3rd - 5th Grade Project

Mehndi or mehendi is a form of body art from Ancient India, in which decorative designs are created on a person's body, using a paste, created from the powdered dry leaves of the henna plant.
Practiced mainly in the Indian Subcontinent, mehndi is the application of a temporary form of skin decoration. Mehndi decorations became fashionable in the West in the late 1990s, where they are called henna tattoos.

Using a variety of skin color construction paper, pencils, permanent markers, and scissors 4th and 5th grade students created realistic Mehendi hand and arm designs. Students researched popular Mehendi designs and their symbolic meaning before creating their own unique and personal design. Individual Mehendi hands were cut out by students and then glued in small groups to collaborative painted canvases.

Worksheets & Resources