Jewelry design...out of paper? REALLY?

Yesterday was our second day of classes.  It's always such a relief to get through the first day, with all of the registration and enrollment forms to fill out, etc.  But on this day, after the collection of forms and roll taken, our class could begin in earnest.  We have been asked as a faculty to help our students become better writers by giving them a "bell ringer" the first 10 minutes of class.  Actually, we could choose from a couple different forms of participation, but I have chosen a writing exercise as that which would be most fitting.  I had the projector on and the new ipad2 plugged in with a Pages post.  I had the students write on what they thought was meant be the term "to care" and give 3 examples of things, places, or people they cared about and why.  They got right into it and seemed to have a lot to say.  I will take a look at the writings in a couple of weeks when I post grades.

Many of my students have not had Art 1 as a class.  They fulfilled their requirement by a dance, theater arts, or music credit.  No matter.  I'll teach them what they need to learn.  I spent about 20 minutes in each class reviewing the ELEMENTS OF ART...LINE, SHAPE, VALUE, COLOR, TEXTURE, AND SPACE.  As I told them, these concepts are present in every genre of art and particularly in jewelry.

I thought up an exercise that I figured would introduce them to the idea of creating designs easily, using construction  paper to cut out the shapes and lines and then combine them using glue into a variety of jewelry designs. I videoed my first period students beginning that process.  Then I took pictures of some of the designs after my 3rd period  was finished.  Following first is the video, then a photo of the work: