A Study of Chihuly and His Art: How We Covered Academic Standards and More Through Interest Based Learning

It all started when I showed the kids pictures of my trip to Columbus to see the Chihuly Exhibit! 

They oooo’d and awed after every picture and started asking questions right away! When they found out he made everything out of glass they were amazed and had even more questions! I also showed them a picture of this famous artist.

Here are some of their wonders:

Then I planned. What standards could I cover through this interest? I usually use a web map to figure it out.

A Lesson in Perseverance: 

We went to YouTube to watch Dale Chihuly explain what’s glass is made of and how he creates his sculptures and paintings. We learned how he hurt his eye in an accident and then his arm surfing so that he could no longer lift the heavy pipes and blow the molten hot glass without being a danger to himself and others. Here is where the most important lesson came from and the kids really took this in...Rather than giving up what he loved to do most, Chihuly problem solved. He went to his friends and created a team that could create his designs for him. Creating a team from their friends is something these kids have learned to do in our class when they can’t solve a problem themselves so they really could relate with him over this!

A Lesson in Seeing the Bright Side:

Chihuly used to sketch his designs but after his accidents started painting designs creating beautiful abstract paintings! He may have never started painting if he hadn’t hurt his eye or his arm. The kids watched him and saw how much fun he had squirting paint and what freedom he had with his art! They loved creating abstracts at our easel! 

They loved his Macchia sculptures! Macchia means “spot” in Italian! They created their own Macchia decorating coffee filters with Crayola markers, putting over a cup and spraying them with starch. The starch made the colors blend and helped it hold their shape. They turned out beautiful!

They were also interested in Chihuly’s Rotolos! Rotolo means “coil” in Italian.

This little friend started the trend then others decided to make one too!

Math was incorporated through the 3D shapes Chihuly used in his art. We discussed the difference between sculptures which are 3D and solid and paintings which are 2D and flat.  They found both 3D and 2D shapes in his sculptures and paintings. Chihuly made these beautiful cylinders out of glass that inspired some friends to create their own using cardboard tubes paint, glitter and colored cellophane!

For literacy, the kids wrote an opinion piece about which Chihuly sculpture they thought was the best. 

They also learned what a biography was and wrote one about Chihuly by writing something they now knew about him that was a fact.

In Science we learned about the properties of objects and sorted by those properties. 

They created transparent and translucent art inspired by Chihuly’s paintings that we hung in the window to see how the light shown through and explored transparency, translucency and opaqueness on our overhead projector that we also use as a light table. 

Here is our display documenting what we learned! 













It is amazing how much of the standards can be taught and practiced through following the students interests! Because they are interested it doesn’t even feel like work to them! But they also worked on those important life skills they need to be successful: Critical and creative thinking, problem solving, collaboration/teamwork, perseverance when things get hard or don’t work as planned. During this study, they used every single one of these life skills! Now to see what they choose to dive into next!