Art

DESCRIPTION:

• As the objective of the project was was to work on developing Compassion Integrity and positive energy, learners were encouraged to think about issues faced by global communities, such as social injustices, illness, poverty, national disasters, environmental issues and war or the positive aspects of those communities. In art, learners have the chance to design and complete their own Mandala (see bellow) representing different elements of this project.

Data:

• Mandalas
• Pictures
• Presentation of Learning (POL)

Components:

• Work on artifacts (video, painting, movie, play, dialogue ….) that will showcase the process of developing compassion integrity
• Start With Walk Around NY
• Mandala’s Around the World: Let learners team up and use different medium to create a team Mandala.
• Example 1; Example 2; Example 3;
• Work on MANDALA

Materials and Resources Used:

Week 1-2: BACKGROUND Mandala Background, Watch Ted Talks, Explore Mandala’s around the world, let kids compare-contrast few mandalas; research and learn about mandala elements, purpose, meaning; explore different techniques and mediums (mosaic, water colors, pastel, construction, chock, clay, wood….);

Research Resources

Mandala Sites

Mandala information by Jytte Hansen

Building a Sand Mandala

The Rossi Collection of early Tibetan mandalas

Mandala: Buddhist Tantric Diagrams

Houston Chronicle article : The Art of Tibetan Sand Painting

StarWheels (futuristic mandala paintings)

Mandala Art

The Mandala Project

The World Mandala Project

VIDEOS

Week 3: Choose a focus area: Let learners choose a community (school, local, national, global), to dedicate their Mandala, then share their idea with their team. Explore the area you chose: the world, continents, community etc… Research and annotate important aspects and elements.

Week 4: Design a small scale Mandala blueprint (just a sketch) and present it to other teams for “Critical Friends Protocol”. Improve the blueprint/ sketch and get ready for design phase.

Week 4- 7/8 : Work on Mandalas, The team then determines which elements they wish to include in their collaborative mandala. They include elements they learned in History, ELA, Science.... Work on all parts, develop a description (one page, including, what, why, how, and the process reflection)

Week 9 : reflections, revisions, beautiful work and one page Mandala description (each team member gets a paragraph “what did we do”; “Why did we do that/why did we chose what we chose/ what made us decide upon this…”; “How did we create our own Mandala?” ; “Reflection of the design process: what did we experience?- positive, negative and interesting instances); Mandala Elements: describe the elements on your mandala (ex. Sun with teeth and underneath people of different races and colors “building a rainbow”- global warming is increasing and we can only prevent and address this problem if we work collectively on global solutions that are different but work very well together)