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.

3rd grade food mosaics

The quarter is rapidly coming to a close and there is a stack of art a mile high on my desk. I've been grading and photographing like crazy. One of these days I may even get some up on the wall in the halls!  The major project for third grade this past quarter was a food-inspired paper mosaic. It was supposed to be done in time for Thanksgiving, but the project took much longer than I expected. Next year I should just do a mosaic pattern on a smaller piece of paper I think.

Everyone started with a patterned border 2 squares thick. Then they drew a fruit or vegetable inside the frame and filled up the space with the paper mosaic chips. When a box crossed a color section they could cut the chips vertically, horizontally, or diagonally to fit in. The kids did a great job and were really meticulous about finding the right color, cutting and gluing them down.

The number one most popular color was turquoise, which meant that as we neared the end of the project and resources dwindled I had some disappointed kids. The paper mosaic chips are really a great material, though- they are double-sided color, slightly shiny, card-stock weight cut into perfect little squares. It was a lucky find in my closets leftover from the previous art teacher, but I'll be sure to get them again.

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.

Presents

 The last week of school was a fourth grade frenzy of fiber art. All the kids wanted to finish their embroidery work to bring home as presents. I gave them options to use a backing piece of felt as a frame, or to make a pocket or a pillow. Most of them chose a pillow.

 I'm really proud of them. They worked really hard to have good craftsmanship. Embroidery is a great medium for developing fine motor skills, patience, and perseverance. There were moments of frustration and some poked fingers of course, but there was also a wonderful buzz of stitching and the joy of handwork.

 Kids need opportunities to make things. Not just pictures, but things that can be used or have purpose. They need to know about craftspeople as well as about artists. Not everybody is destined to become an artist, but everyone should know how to make things.

By the way, contrary to popular belief, boys enjoy sewing. In fact 2 of these pictures were made by boys- can you guess which ones?  One more reason I'm proud of my 4th graders- we got through 3 weeks of stitching with 4 classes and didn't lose a single needle! Whoohoo!

I'm enjoying my holiday break, but I also am looking forward to getting back to school...

Winter Wonderland

I love the last week of school before the Winter break. The joy of the approaching holidays and the kids' enthusiasm is soothing the soul.

 My after school art club made gingerbread houses and these snow globes. I picked up some tiny snowman figurines and a frond of fake pine needles. One of my kids brought in a bunch of glass baby food jars and lids thanks to a baby cousin. We pressed a small ball of white model magic into the lid, added the figurines, then painted the inside of the jar with glitter paint and finally twisted the lid onto the jar. My luck with liquid-filled snow-globes in the past  has been messy and unsatisfactory, but the glitter paint makes it look like there's always a flurry going on inside. They're surprisingly enchanting.

 My Kinders and First Graders are working on wintry landscapes. We looked at snowy pictures like Harry Callahan's lakeside trees in snow to find value and horizon lines. The first graders drew 3 different horizon lines across a page, then painted each of the four sections a different value of blue. I gave them cups of white, then came around with a "squirt" of blue to change the value for each step.

The following week I reminded them that far away things looked teeny-tiny, and close-up things looked really big. We talked about all the things we might see in a winter landscape and they drew in oil pastel. Of course, some kids are super excited for Christmas and there were Christmas trees and Santa's sleigh flying through some pictures. Mostly there were bare-branched trees, snowflakes, cardinals, and snowmen. They are really adorable pictures, and I can't wait to hang them in the halls. We have a holiday luncheon on Friday, but part of me would like to skip it and just totally refresh all my hallway displays! Oh well, one more full day and a half day till break!

All is Calm

This week has been overwhelming with great highs and deep lows. On Tuesday I pulled together final details for the holiday concert decorations, and on Wednesday we put them all up and had an amazing concert. My artclub made all the elements for our backdrop panels and made origami stars to hang about.

  I know teachers are all proud of their students, but as a specialist teacher I get to know the entire student body. At first I thought having to go to the concert might be a bit of a drag (It's a school night and I taught all day, put up the decorations all afternoon, and helped manage the kiddos as they lined up for the concert), but then seeing all of "my kids" up there made my heart swell up with joy and pride.
It's also been a week of finishing projects. My 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders have been working for weeks on paintings, mosaics, and sculptures. We FINALLY got them finished! It's simultaneously satisfying and frustrating to call "Time's UP" on a project. Not everybody works at the same pace. Some are done on time and do well, others could really use another week to make it even better, and still others think they're done when really they could push further.
My 5th graders completed their letter sculptures and worked in groups to plan displays. Some were able to create words to display together, others made acrostic poems. Here's a word I pulled together from a variety of 5th graders:

I offer this word because of the deepest low of this week. After teaching all day and staying after late to hang artwork etc, I got in the car and heard the news on NPR about the shooting in the elementary school in Connecticut. When such tragedies occurred in the past, I felt sympathy as a parent for those who lost their children. But now as a teacher, I imagine what it must be like to be in the shoes of the teachers who had to respond to such an emergency, trying to stay calm and strong for their students while feeling panic and fear. They are heroic. I pray for the children and teachers and parents of Sandy Hook. I hope they find calm and comfort again soon.