Surrealism, One Page at a Time: How Do You Learn about an Important Movement in Art History, Break Away from the Two-Dimensional Format That Students Often Get Too Much of, Combine Elements of Fine Art and Craft, and End Up with a Very Special Object That Students Can Hold in Their Hands and Show Proudly to Their Friends? My Eighth Graders Did It by Creating One-of-a-Kind Accordion-Fold Books, Using Surrealism as Their Jumping-Off Point

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As I designed this project I worried that it would be too complicated and too logistically challenging. When I broke it down into three separate components, I realized that it was not only do-able, but would give the students a rich and well-balanced art experience.

Materials

* An inner tube cut into 3" (8 cm) squares and scrubbed clean. (I asked a tire store and they gave me used inner tubes for free.)

* Wood, cut down into approximately 2 x 2" (5 x 5 cm) pieces. (I found scrap wood at a cabinet shop and cut it down on a band-saw.)

* Water-base printing ink or acrylic paints for printing or raised stamp pads.

* Foam makeup sponges if using inks.

* Davey board, .082 80 pt. size, cut into 6 1/2" (17 x 17 cm) squares.

* Light tag board, cut into 6 x 18 1/2" (15 x 47 cm) strips.

* Colored pencils.

* Glue, rulers--ideally 18" (46 cm) ones, old catalogs or magazines.

Creating the Content

As an introduction to the lesson, my eighth-grade art class looked carefully at …