"Shoe" Must Be Kidding!

1. Organize students in a common place in the classroom, such as the reading rug, and ask each to remove one shoe and take a serious look that this article of clothing. Have them observe and discuss shoes as a art form, sculpture and fashion. Analyze shoes in terms of the Elements and Principles of Design. Discuss shape, colors, patterns, textures. Also discuss the shoe as form and function. How does a summer play shoe differ from a work boot or a dress up high heel? Why would some shoes be appropriate for a job/role and others' not (i.e. flip flop for office business work or for church function)?
2. Once the discussion appears exhausted, distribute Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils to all students. Ask them to sketch the simple shape of their own shoe with few shoe details. Share and discuss with a peer what other things may be of the same shape as their shoe? Brainstorm ideas. Students may wish to document their ideas on a classroom white board for future reference.
3. Next, have students select one of those ideas and add details to their drawings that would change the shoe's original purpose (i.e high heels become sliding boards on the playground, flip flops become skateboards or surfboards, etc.)
4. Encourage students to color their shoe artwork with Crayola Ultra Clean Markers, Crayola Washable Markers, Crayola Metallic Markers, Crayola Colored Pencils and/or Erasable Colored Pencils.
5. Students draw and color a fitting and appropriate background for their new shoe (i.e. surfboard shoe at the beach, ballet shoe on the river as a kayak, etc.).
6. When all projects are complete, have students present their shoe art to a small group of peers.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, using formal English when appropriate to task and situation.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

VA: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.

VA: Brainstorm multiple approaches to a creative art or design problem.

VA: Identify and demonstrate diverse methods of artistic investigation to choose an approach for beginning a work of art.

VA: Compare one's own interpretation of a work of art with the interpretation of others.

Share artwork with others, discuss different ideas that their original shoe shape could inspire.

Draw the same shoe, but have a limited palette of colors or have a single main idea/theme for the shoe (i.e. primary colors, patterns, sports, animals, etc.).