Tired of snow yet?

 Maybe never. At least my Kinders aren't yet. We tried drawing self-portraits starting with a directed drawing, then adding color and pattern, and finally printing with a q-tip on top to make a flurry or a blizzard.
After 2 years of no snow days, we're getting our fill this year. Another storm may be on the way...

 I'm not sure what's going on in the one above- happy? sad? I think it's exasperated. More snow!!!??? Yay? I don't think we're ever going to get all these projects done. We should just go hibernate and come out when the crocus pops up.

Snowy days, medieval times, and still-lifes

December is speeding by, and I wanted to share what's been going on in My Blue Artroom between snow days, field trips, half days, and holiday concerts. Really it's a wonder I can get the kids to finish anything when I barely seem to see them!

 First graders were definitely able to relate to our snowy landscape project as it's been nothing but snow around here for the last week and a half. We watched  a clip from "The Snowman" as well- so there are some northern lights showing up in a few drawings.

 We tried to emphasize near and far through scale in these drawings. I just realized there was a penguin in the picture above! Another inspiration from the video I think. Isn't it funny how even kids who grow up in rowhomes with flat roofs still draw square houses with triangle roofs?

 I'm impressed with how detailed Santa's sleigh and reindeer are in this picture. I do not make projects specifically holiday related, but kids are excited about Santa right now.

 My 4th graders are learning about medieval art and did an illuminated letter in metal tooling with sharpie color. While half of one 4th grade class was out for choir rehearsal, I had a lovely group of 16 kids. The small size and roomy space allowed me time and energy to follow creative inspiration to add cardstock frames to their creations for them to embellish. It made a huge difference in how they turned out.

 It also allowed more room for personal expression.

 And more space for imaginative drawing. I love the dragon border repeated from the dragon in the metal below: If only all my classes could be just 16 kids- it was the most relaxing and creative day. They were being artists.

 Kindergartners are learning about genre, starting with still-life. we looked at some Matisse and Cezanne still-life images first. I asked them if any of their parents or they took pictures of food or things at home. It was startling how many of them had access to cameras or tablets for taking pictures. I REALLY wish I had technology in the art room like that. These are tech-literate KINDERGARTNERS!!!!!

 Since I don't have bowls and fruit in the art room, we used art room stuff to make a still-life instead. The kids built a little shape still-life for themselves and then drew each shape on their paper (NO tracing!! okay some tracing was going on.... but some kids needed that support).

Coloring skills have skyrocketed in Kindergarten in the past 2 months. I keep emphasizing "no scribbling- that's what 4-year-olds do and we're 5 and 6 years old!" They are taking it to heart and showing me how careful they can be. I love it! 

I have 3 1/2 more days to teach till Winter break!

Kinder Pezzettino drawings

My Kindergartners have been learning about shapes and how they can go together to make pictures. We started off by reading "Pezzettino" by Leo Lionni about a small square who thinks he must be a missing piece of someone else. He goes to all his friends who do daring and wonderful things, but they are all complete. Finally Pezzettino trips and breaks into many tiny pieces and he realizes that he is complete too.

We introduced shapes using the mosaic blocks, and I gave kids a challenge to try to make a sun, a flower, a cat, and finally their own creature out of the shapes. I showed kids how to trace their shapes onto paper to keep their creature since they're not allowed to keep my blocks (oh the silence of 24 kinders tracing blocks!)

The next week we practiced coloring carefully by outlining each shape and coloring it in solid. I went around to each child to ask what their creature could do, and wrote their title on the page in sharpie using the naming style of Lionni. It's not a bunny, it's "One who hops". It's not a snake but "One who slithers".

 Finally for some color and interest in the background we laid squares of bleeding tissue paper over the blank white areas, and I walked around with a spray bottle to make it "rain" on their picture and make magic paint.The kids loved seeing the paint instantly appear on their pages. However, I'm not 100% sold on this technique. It's very messy, and I had some overenthusiastic helpers crumple up a LOT of extra tissue paper into the trash instead of saving it. Luckily I have my intern on Thursdays and a high school helper on Fridays to assist in managing the drying rack traffic.

The students who had clearly made creatures and colored well had more successful results with the tissue. For those who had more random shapes the background color addition jut seemed distracting. Oh well, it was an experiment I'd never tried before, and it was mostly a success.

We have lots more shape things happening in other grades. Our quarter is almost finished and I've got to get kids to finish projects this week!!

Kindergarten Dance Party

 The last project my Kindergartners completed was a Keith Haring inspired dance party print. We looked at Haring's work and figures, noting that they were NOT STICK FIGURES. After letting them try out a few dance poses for the rest of the class, I gave the kids foam shapes to cut and arrange into a stamp. They colored in a background, adding details for how they'd like to decorate for a party.

 Finally we printed, and students were encouraged to trade stamps to "invite friends" to their dance party. They did a great job sharing, and were very enthusiastic about the whole project. We had an extra day to fill, so we went back and added "action lines" to make it look more like their figures were moving around.

The pictures are exuberant. They show a little of how we all feel at the end of this year- happy to be leaving for summer vacation, happy to have accomplished so much this year. I have one more week with students and it will all be spent passing back artwork for portfolios. I might do it differently next year- all this artwork is a little overwhelming... I can't believe my first year of full-time teaching is almost over!

1st grade bouquets

My first graders have just finished some beautiful still-life bouquets. We started by looking at a sunflower still-life by Vincent Van Gogh, but noted that it was a little plain looking- the colors were all similar, the vase was simple, and the background was very plain. I thought it would be more fun to add pattern to our still-life project.

 We started by making a symmetrical vase. Students chose either orange or yellow construction paper, folded it in half "hotdog style", and drew a wavy line that started and ended on the fold. After cutting it out they opened it up and discovered some very interesting shapes. It's fun to see how different all the vases turned out! I told the kids to pretend they were potters who had to glaze their vase, and they added lots of colors and patterns in crayon.

 Next we made our table and wallpaper backgrounds. We looked at the wood grain on our classroom tables and tried to copy the swirls and knots of the wood. Some students chose to make a tablecloth pattern instead. When the background was finished, we glued the vases down, trying to leave enough room for the bouquet. Guess what? Glue stick doesn't really stick to crayon! After my first class glue stick failure, the others used elmers and dot,dot, not alotted. Some interesting composition problems occurred along the way. One student, below, had drawn a table with the paper in horizontal format, but had a super tall vase. So she cut it in half and had 2 bowls instead!

 Finally, it was time to print our flowers. We used large and small wooden spools as stamps with red and yellow tempera paint. It's interesting to see how different their flowers all look depending on how they printed the flowers. Some look more like daisies, others like hydrangea. Some just made on flower per stem they drew, others made a cloud of flowers.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out. Even though this project seemed very straightforward, it still lots of little opportunities for students to make artistic choices. It also had a lot of review of art element concepts from the beginning of the year (line type, pattern, primary colors, cutting and gluing technique).

Next up we're having a review of genres. We've done a landscape, a portrait, and a still-life, and so as a review we're going to do a collaborative "1st grade museum".



Cuteness Overload

We're working through genres, and the Kinders and First graders are on portraiture. With the Kindergartners we read "Too Purpley" to help us start thinking about clothing and patterns. Since we're in the dead of winter, a bundled-up self-portrait seemed appropriate.

First we filled a whole page with patterns in crayon. Then we used a tracer for the hat and mitten shapes to cut out and glue on a background paper (I'm trying to throw in lots of cutting and gluing practice!!). Next we drew our faces, hair,eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and jackets. Finally we colored the backgrounds and added some swooshing wind and falling snowflakes. Some kids drew themselves with a tongue sticking out to catch the flakes!

We ended our Friday with a snowstorm, so I kept imagining the Kinders all going out after school with their tongues sticking out.

In first grade we looked at Mary Cassatt's family portraits to get ideas for our own portraits. We drew an oval picture frame and decorated it, then used a face tracer for each family member. I don't really like using tracers, but the first time I tried to do this project without tracers the kids all drew their family members so small that you couldn't really see anything and wasted a ton of space in their big sheet of paper. The tracers helped place the faces so that afterwards they could overlap the bodies. 

 Some kids added family pets. Some only drew themselves with mom and dad and left out all their siblings (isn't that revealing? we all want to be the center of our parents' attention!)

 I encouraged the kids to add a background showing where their family was, but only a few let their imaginations carry them off. In the portrait above, one student shows himself at his birthday party- a perfect time for a family portrait!



Still Life projects

We're working through genres in art class. The second and fourth grades just completed still life projects with water-color resist. 

Second graders drew an animal toy from observation and added a shadow, a table line, and a wall pattern. They colored their animal by blending oil pastels then painted the backgrounds in watercolor.

The 4th grader made an imaginary still-life by stacking ellipses to make a "crazy vase" shape. They shaded the sides to make the vase look rounder and colored in a shadow. Afterwards, they painted their wall and table with watercolor.

My favorite ones were when the students blended colors on the paper, blue over red... green over blue... purple over orange. The layered colors made moodier paintings.

Next up we'll expand our drawing skills with some observational drawing.

And I'd better come up with some more still-life ideas for 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades.

Happy New Year!

We've been back to school for a week, and the kids are getting settled back into routine. Since we only had 2 days last week I did a quick project with the Kinder and first grade classes I saw so that I could get the entire grades back onto the same project this week. We shared some of the "exciting" things we'd seen over vacation, which in my area means MUMMER PARADE (you wouldn't believe how many of my students and their families were in the brigades). However, I was thinking about New Year's Eve fireworks which I watched from my back steps.

I showed the classes a video of a fireworks show and the kids noticed that fireworks are colorful, have straight, curved, and dotted lines that shoot out from the center, and are different sizes. With the fresh vision in their minds, students used construction paper crayons on black paper to fill their page with fireworks. At the end of class we circled up for a "Fireworks Show", and I let the kids take turns making a sound effect for their picture as they showed it off. It was a very fun lesson that helped my little ones review types of lines.

My resolution this year is to stay organized, get through grading, photographing, "Artsonia'ing", and displaying kids projects in a timely manner, and make my lesson directions easy to follow. Even though we're not technically at the halfway mark, the Winter break FEELS like halfway through the year. Hopefully the second half gets even better.

Kinder Still-life Drawing

I owe this one to Jessica at "The Art of Education" blog. She posted a year ago about a way to do observational drawing with Kindergartners, which stuck in my memory. She focused on architecture with this lesson, but I wanted to apply it to a different genre. I'm working through units on Genre in art with my K-3rd grades, and introduced my Kinders to still-life this week. I have a bulletin board up right now with various pictures showing different genres, so we did a kinesthetic learning activity where the students showed me with a hand gesture whether a picture showed a person (portrait), place (landscape), or thing (still-life). This made a literacy connection to nouns as well. For the portraits they pointed to their faces, for landscapes they folded hands, and for still-life they pointed to an open hand. I really like these gesture activities as it allows the entire class to show me what they know, instead of just the few who like to raise their hands.

I pulled out the boxes of pattern blocks which usually sit in my free-activity area. I noticed before how many students enjoy tracing the shapes to make a picture, and thought they would be familiar enough with the shapes in order to draw them from observation. I showed them how to build a little still-life out of blocks, then draw what they saw shape by shape.Afterwards we added a "table" line and a "wallpaper" pattern to complete the pictures. Some students really got it. The most advanced one is above, where the child even mirrored the shapes in the shadow!!

 They were not allowed to trace the shapes, so it was a challenge for some. But not tracing meant that there were some kids who drew really big, and some who drew really small. So the pictures look really different, and none look exactly like my exemplar (yay!).

 Lots of my Kinders are just emerging from the scribble stage, and it's hard to get them to color carefully. However, I made this a one day project only, which didn't leave much time for coloring.

 I'm amazed at what Kindergartners can do with a little instruction. These drawings are very different from their everyday free-draw styles. It's also interesting to see in this project which students find drawing more engaging and which ones just want to build with blocks!

Next up we'll try out landscape painting with a little "snowy" inspiration. One class already started, and I CANNOT BELIEVE how quiet a class of Kindergartners can get while painting!!
I have a lot of classes finishing projects this week, so I'll have more to share soon. The Kinders get shorter projects, so I feel like I'm writing more about them than the other grades!

Eric Carle Kinder Collages

After looking at Eric Carle's ABC animal book, Kindergartners learned how to make painted textured papers with spots, stripes, and scratches to prepare for an animal collage project. Then we talked about all the different places animals can live. The kids thought about forests, jungles, grasslands, zoos, oceans, ponds, farms, and even in our houses! They drew a background habitat for their animal first. Then we practiced tearing paper and using our imaginations to make animal shapes from torn paper.Finally, we tore our good painted texture paper to create an animal collage a la Eric Carle.

 One boy was very original and did a penguin who lived in the arctic (we hadn't come up with that one as a group!) I'm not sure if that's a person or another penguin sliding down the iceberg in the background. It looks like he drew some wind to show how cold it was, and even a fish for his penguin to eat!

 You may not have heard of green cows before, but that's what this one is. There's also a chick at the bottom and some birds hanging out on the fence in this farm scene. I think this girl also discovered that coloring big areas goes faster if you use the side of a peeled crayon.

This one is a very big tiger hanging out by a stream.
This project had great diversity in the finished pictures. The kids had a lot of choice, and were really able to envision animal shapes from their torn paper. It was remarkable to see how much they already knew about animals and habitat as they did this project. Animal drawings seem more developed at this age than people drawings. I wonder why that is. All four of my Kindergarten classes went at this in different ways. Some felt anxious about trying to tear a specific shape and wasted a lot of time, while another class finished the background and collage zippity-zip in one session. Our next project is going to build off the shapes idea for a quick "still-life" drawing.

First grade name repetition

A little Jasper Johns inspiration led to the first graders' name repetition project. It's fun looking at art with kids and seeing what they notice. They could see the differences in color, and the way Jasper Johns repeated his numbers in a pattern in his big number grids. We started by folding our papers to create a 4x4 grid and traced over the fold lines to make boxes. Next we repeated the letters of our names in the boxes making them big and fat. We also tried to make a warm/cool pattern with the colors of the letters.

 This past week we got to paint for the first time! Some classes handled it better than others, but overall, the first grade has some great, careful painters!  We tried to choose a warm color to paint over cool color letters, and a cool color to paint over warm color letters. Depending on how many letters in a child's name, we ended up with stripes or checkerboards of color.

All of my classes, except 5th grade have now completed their second project of the year. I've been busy grading work. I'd hoped to get more pictures taken too, but forgot my camera this week. It's a feat to grade, photograph, upload work to Artsonia, and try to hang artwork around the building. Oh yeah, and teach! But I won't complain about a thing- I talked with a middle school art teacher this week from another school and realized how wonderful my school and teaching situation is!!

Kindergarten Cooperation

 Loop-dy-loop-dy-loop! CCCS Kindergartners learned about the colors of the rainbow, made loopy lines, and learned about sharing materials in the art room this week. To get them started we sat in the circle area and sang a color song. Then we practised drawing small, big, fast, and slow loopy lines in the air.

 Some kindergartners have more careful coloring skills than others, but some of them put a lot of energy and enthusiasm into filling up their space. They had to share the crayon boxes, asking for it with a please and a thank you. They also had to share their table space and picture. I put out a giant piece of paper on each table (and a great "wooooow!" rose from the little ones).

 I'm really proud of how well my kindergartners are adjusting to the art room. They work cooperatively and quietly. When their pictures were done, I cut out the loops so they looked like clouds and hung them in the Kindergarten corridor. What I didn't know was that nearly the whole school uses the bathrooms in this corridor during lunchtime- and everyone has been really complimentary about how nice it is to have something to look at there while they wait their turn! Although I think we need a conversation about how to treat artwork in the halls. I saw one girl practically hugging one of the low-hanging loopy clouds.

Hopefully I'll have lots more work to hang up soon. The rest of the grades are all working on "name" inspired works (because I have so many names to remember!!!). Here are my exemplars hanging out on the board. We had art club signups this week, and Art Club starts after school next Tuesday.