5th grade Final Elementary Project

My final project for 5th graders involves them making a lot of choices about their art to finish out the year.
First, students choose a theme for their last project, anything they enjoy or will be interested in for the last few weeks of school.  Examples are: friends, sports, imagination, seasons, animals, etc.
The next step involves planning out 3 pieces of artwork which will be created on a trifold piece of tag board.  The size is usually about 12" high by 18" long.  To choose their 3 projects, 5th graders look at a list of projects we have done throughout elementary school.  If someone moved here recently, they just choose 3 things they enjoy doing in art.
Examples they might choose would be: Vincent Van Gogh starry night, optical illusion and pointillism.  Once they have decided 3 types of art they wish to show that will go with their theme, they must decide what art supplies to use.  Each piece of art must be a different medium.  I am pretty open with what supplies they can use: paint, tissue, glue, yarn, oil pastels, chalk, construction paper and more are all available for the students.

So a final plan in their sketchbook will have a thumbnail sketch of a rectangle with three parts, quick sketches of each piece of art and some writing to tell me what art project/technique they will use and what art supplies are needed.

Sports themed final project

Dessert theme...yummy!

An example would be: sports theme:  a baseball with flames behind it done in pointillism with markers.  A football made of cut paper with an optical illusion background made with colored pencil, and a basketball drawn and shaded with pencil.

This project has a fashion design theme

When all three parts are finished (usually about one art period per piece of artwork), the trifold is stapled together so it stands and all three pieces of art can be seen.  A small piece of cardboard with two cuts at bottom is used for a title.  The theme and artist's name are written on both sides of the title piece.

This artist added some black yarn

This project works well to keep the 5th graders interested the last few weeks of school.  It is a chance for them to make decisions/choices regarding their artwork and to use art supplies they enjoy most.  The results are always creative and fun, and I enjoy walking around talking to them about the artwork they are making, while they like the freedom the lesson allows to "show what they can do".

This artist used a drawing book to draw her fish