Michelangelo, Renaissance master....and Ninja Turtle

 4th graders learned all about the Renaissance master, Michelangelo Buonarroti. At this point, rounding out our Renissance unit, I wondered if students picked up on the names Leonardo, Donatello, and now Michaelangelo. I asked students if they've heard of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The class erupts. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE NINJA TURTLES WERE ALL NAMED AFTER RENAISSANCE ARTISTS?! Splinter must have been an art lover.
As for Michelangelo the artist, he had natural talent even from a very young age. We learned all about the history of his masterpieces and even what he was like as a young boy. He loved chiseling sculptures out of large blocks of marble but also was an amazing painter. We looked at some of his very famous works such as David the sculpture and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which Michelangelo painted while laying on his back on scaffolding.  As a class we wanted to experience what that must have been like to paint an endless ceiling laying on your back.



 Students were given a photo copy of "the fingers touching" of Michelangelo's God creating Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. We then taped them to the under side of each table to act as the 'ceiling'. We talked about Do's and Don'ts of safety with paint. Each table moved and stacked their chairs to put to the side so we could easily lay underneath the table. We used flesh tone to paint in the hands and then used other fun colors to paint around the background.



We also talked about the famous David marble sculpture made by Michelangelo. We heard in the video that he "needed some clothes". SO that brought us to the art careers discussion....fashion design!

We talked about how fashion design not only means designing clothes, but there are many careers based on this concept! Costume design for movies/sets, costume design for musicals/theater on stage, designing for stores, the fashion worlds making new trends, dand even being a designer for celebrity clients (we definately chatted about "Project Runway").

Students used markers and colored pencils to draw new styles on top of the famous David. But we needed a female model too to wear some feminine style clothes too! So we used Botticelli's "Venus" from "Birth of Venus" paintings. Don't worry, we had swimsuits on them that the students then colored over. :) Students came up with some amazing new styles! They loved this art lesson!