Parshat Bereshit: Light and Dark
After a very long summer and an even longer period of holidays, school has FINALLY started for real. Things are still very up in the air in terms of my teaching (who, what, where, when), but I knew that I wanted to start fresh with the first parsha - Parshat Bereshit.
Allow me to remind myself (and you) what I am trying to do in these weekly adventures...In each class, I hope to:
1) introduce one important story, theme, or verse from the weekly parsha
2) introduce one artistic technique or concept (and/or famous artist) that somehow connects to the parsha.
3) create finished art projects that are displayed in the school on a weekly basis.
4) incorporate at least one other "mode" such as drama, story, game, music, food.
The creation story has lots of artistic potential. In the past, I have loved doing 7-panel representations of the days inspired by works like these (aren't they pretty?):
But, alas, I thought that this was too ambitious for the first day since I also needed to dedicate time to learning names and setting rules. I also thought that this week's parsha would be a great time to do this fun "pinterest-y" project which introduces cool and warm colors using the sun and the moon (created on the fourth day :))
But, as pretty as these turn out, I thought that they would really just be coloring the whole time and I wanted them to do something a bit more creative.
Then, I remembered a friend telling me about "NOTAN" last year when she heard that I was teaching art. She said that this technique is great for all ages. Notan is actually a Japanese word meaning dark-light. PERFECT! "And G-d said let there be light and there was light - and God separated the light from the dark." The principle of Notan is the interaction between positive (light) and negative (dark) space. This is represented by mirror images of one black and one white shape revolving around a center point. The positive and negative areas make a whole through a unity of opposites that are equal and inseparable. In Notan, opposites complement and do not conflict:
Notan cut paper projects are great for teaching a lot of concepts including contrast, positive and negative space, symmetry, and geometric vs. organic shapes.
I loved the idea of (1) focusing on only the first day of Creation since my time was limited, (2) doing a black and white project on the first day and building up to color next week (big time - rainbow!) (3) doing something on the first day that was relatively simple - cutting and gluing (no paint!)
There are many Notan lesson plans on-line but I was specifically looking for a SIMPLE version appropriate for first and second graders. This was the version I used -
I love the way that they came out and together they make for a great bulletin board!
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Like with all of these projects, there are so many exciting directions (STEAM!) to take the theme - learning about different sources of light, experiments relating to light as energy, light and shadows, symmetry, etc. And... this would be a perfect parsha to serve black and white cookies :)
SHABBAT SHALOM!