Pre-historic Art with Middle School
My 7th grade art curriculum takes students chronologically from pre-historic art through modern movements. We began this school year by looking at Cuevas de las Manos in Argentina. I love imagining the early humans who imprinted their hands on these walls thousands of years ago. Throughout our entire evolution as a species we’ve always had the urge to make art and leave a piece of ourselves behind.
Students use the Feldman model of art criticism to observe, analyze, interpret and judge historical artworks in a graphic organizer. When I asked for interpretations about this cave art one student guessed that the hands could be a way for a community to preserve a memory. That’s what I think too.
We discussed how early humans used a “spray-painting” method by blowing pigment with bone pipes to stencil hand prints on the walls. I used this method as inspiration to design a project where students used 3 different techniques to create cave art on textured craft paper. I printed stencils of all kinds of cave-dwelling animals on cardstock using a cricut machine. Students were encouraged to create narratives with these animals and stenciling techniques.
It’s important to add that I only see middle school students once a week— heartbreaking! These projects have to be simple and snappy because my students just don’t get the time to deep dive into artmaking that they deserve. Inequality in public education, yadda yadda, but we do what we can and keep it as engaging as possible.
Students used toothbrushes and small cups of paint to create a “spray-paint” splatter effect.
I also provided black and white chalk pencils for students to add illustrations and details around their animals.
Cuevas de las Manos Source
Students also used chalk pastels to create a “halo” by rubbing the pastels outward from the edges of the animal stencils.
Here is my teaching exemplar employing all 3 techniques. I’ve seen teachers connect narratives for pre-historic projects to past and present iconography. A fun prompt might be what could we draw to tell humans in the future about our society today? The class could then make a list such as smart phones, electric cars, traffic lights, etc. and draw visual symbols to add to their cave art.
