This year in 3rd grade

I had a great time with my 3rd graders this year. They have art first thing in the morning, and it's such a great time of day for focused creativity. They are also a good group of kids who haven't lost their sense of curiosity. I'm also generally pleased with the scope of projects we did together and how successful the kids were in each media.

So here's what we did in 3rd grade art this year:

We learned about symmetry. We practiced cutting and collage skills, and created a mask-like monster using the letters of our names to create unique shapes.

 We learned about different types of lines and about negative and positive space. However our cutting skills were not as advanced as our line-drawing skills, and many of the kids struggled with this project. Although the results look interesting, there was not enough content to the imagery in this project to engage the kids well. This needs to be adapted for next year.

 We learned how to create a sense of movement in a picture by using lines. This was a great one day project.

 We learned about self-portraits and how artists express emotions through expression and emotional color. Although I love this project, and it as an improvement over last year's "conversation" portrait project, I feel like I'm missing something. The kids take so long to paint it! But I think painting a smaller picture would be difficult too. Invariably they struggle with noses too...

We learned about how to create a sense of space in a picture through warm and cool color, scale, overlap, and placement on the picture plane. This year we made our own scratchart and then drew an outer space landscape. But I miss the variety of the pop-up landscapes I did last year. I might switch the scratchart project to an abstract project instead. It would also work on positive and negative space.

 We learned about complementary colors, tints, and shades and ho to blend oil pastels. We also learned about the still-life genre and drew healthy and unhealthy things.Finally we used mosaic squares to make a patterned border. I love how these turned out, but I think I would go smaller next year. One kid who missed several classes did just as good a job on a smaller piece of paper and was able to complete the border in half the time. The border really took way too long, and since the kids generally draw small anyway, their still-life objects were lost in a sea of negative space.

 We learned about Gyotaku fish printing from Japan. We learned how to make a relief print from an object, but also by drawing into styrofoam. These were beautiful and the kids really enjoyed printing.

 The last quarter was dedicated to craft. We learned about traditional American embroidery samplers by school-age children in the 18th century. We learned how to stitch running and whip stitches and how to sew on a button. This was many students' favorite project of the year.

 We learned how to create a coiled vessel in clay. We saw both traditional and contemporary craftspeople have used this form in their work. We also made a painting in response to the completed bowls to "camouflage" it.

I'm excited to work with 3rd grade again next year. One of the teachers asked me to integrate with their science curriculum and create a project that uses "simple machines". I love to integrate with other core curriculum and collaborate with my colleagues!