Aborigine Didgeridoos (2nd Grade)

Fear not, my fellow teachers! The end of the year approaches! But really, who am I kidding? We'll still be going to professional development seminars, planning lessons, reading books, and doing all manner of things that are not resting our weary selves. There is no rest for a teacher.

It's been a beautiful, long, crazy second year of teaching and my kiddos and I are spending the last weeks of school exploring the vivid world of Aborigine art. While my kinder and 1st graders were making cotton swab dot paintings, my 2nd graders were tackling a much more musical task: the didgeridoo.

When I got my art room last year it had some pretty interesting finds hidden away in cabinets from the former teacher such as about forty two foot long cardboard tubes. I knew they were going to come in handy so I held on to them for almost two years until the time was right! And that time was last week.

Many of my 2nd graders were students of mine last year in first grade and had already explored Aborigine dot paintings, so I knew they needed more. So many tubes + excited students = amazing Didgeridoos!

Didgeridoos are fascinating Aboriginal instruments, simple in design but powerful in aesthetics. If you've never taken a listen I highly suggest it, the sound is very unique especially to my untrained ear!

• Day One and Two: Sketches! While listening to some didgeridoo music we explored Aborigine symbols and I encouraged my students to craft narratives or stories with the symbols in their sketches. It took a minute to wrap their cute little heads around, but once they got the hang of it I was blown away by their creativity. We had just talked about butterflies so symmetry ended up playing an unintended role in their designs!
  
• Day Three: Painting Tubes! I will admit that I had the MOST anxiety over tube painting- I had crazy nightmares of paint being everywhere. Clothes! Hair! Faces! And my fears were confirmed! But we survived thanks to an in class sink and many baby wipes. So. Many. Baby. Wipes. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Day Four: More Sketching! I'm a big fan of pencil first, paint second so I had my students re-draw their sketches on their didgeridoo before we went back and painted them. I think it saved a lot of disappointment later because despite taking an extra class period to do, the kiddos were able to really get a feel for how different it is to work with a curved surface. 

• Day Five and Six: Painting Again! My students loved this project mainly because it involved so much painting and if they could paint every day of the week they really would. I had them paint with cotton swabs so we could hone those dot painting skills we picked up last year and it was a fun challenge for them.
  
  
  
  

I give you the Aborigine Didgeridoo! Brought to you by my wonderful 2nd Graders!

And they make noise! I'm not sure if I'd call it music, but a real didgeridoo has basically the same construction, so a more talented musician could probably figure it out. Sorry, Parents! Sometimes art is loud. ;]