3rd and 4th graders

3rd graders continued the yummy noms projects by studying Wayne Thiebaud cakes and desserts. We created a still life were we designed our own cake, we had to think about lights and darks for shadows, and we practiced making ellipses to make our cakes look more realistic.

Here are some of the yummiest!

Meanwhile 4th graders were working hard on facial proportions in clay and color mixing for skin tone. Can you guess who?

Watercolor 101 Day (and clay fish!)

I introduced our Kindergartners to watercolor this marking period. We talked about whats different about watercolor vs. tempera paints. We reviewed good painting techniques. We talked about warm and cool colors and blending. Then I just let the kids go at it on some scrap paper to just test it out and get a feel for it before moving onto an actual project.

It sure was messy, but the kids loved it!!! So heres some pictures from our first day using watercolor :)

I am also sneaking in some old pictures into this post, from when we painted our clay projects! Some of our students lost their clay fish in the great kiln disaster of 2010, so I remade a bunch of fish so no one would feel left out the day we were going to paint them. The kids really enjoyed painting the fish, they really liked painting the inside of the mouth. We had to talk about how its 3-D so we really need to look all around it when we paint to get all the white spaces.

A Fun Fall Project

I made these paper bag fall trees with some 1st graders, they loved it so much I decided to have Kindergarten and 2nd grade particpate in the activity before Thanksgiving break too.

Heres some of us in action, thinking about what kinds of colors we see on the trees and thinking about what makes something a sculpture:

Kindergarten

1st grade

2nd grade

End of the second marking period!

Perhaps my new years goal should be to update the blog more regularly ;)

So we have had a busy second marking period and all kinds of fun in the art room.

I took some pictures of the 1st graders "Chilhuly Bowls" modeled after his Macchias.

These bowls were quite a hit at the fall festival night. As well as the 2nd grade leaf bowls, 4th grade clay portraits, and 3rd grade yummy pies!

Looking forward to more clay projects next year, sans the kiln disaster!

Some other projects we did 1st marking period

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the second marking period and another 9 weeks of awesome art projects!

Here's some other projects we worked on this first marking period, many are hanging the walls outside the art room!


4th graders worked on 'big' paintings. We focused on flowers, the students were introduced to Georgia O'Keeffe. They drew the flowers really big, and then we painted them trying to use darks and lights to create value. We also tried to use complimentary colors to help emphasize the flower and really make it pop!







They turned out great!




1st graders have been working on cityscapes and a watercolor painting. The cityscapes were abstract, we used tissue paper and paint to create the shapes of buildings. We talked about architecture and what architects do and we also talked about overlapping. For the watercolor painting we did a pig, we talked about the kinds of animals you might see on a farm. We also talked about foreground, middle ground, and background. I was also impressed because we used watercolor, and that can be messy, we really focused on good craftsmanship and the kids were so excited to learn we could make shades of pink by using thinned out red watercolor.






















Kindergarten had been working on paper projects to help develop those fine motor skills and to help the understand techniques for cutting and tearing paper, and of course using very little glue!








We worked on an initial collage, we talked about what initials are and helped each other figure out our correct initials. They also did a Kandinsky circle project where they cut different sized circles out of paper and had to glue them down overlapping different colors.









We had a painting 101 day, with surprisingly very little mess! The students learned about how to hold a paint brush, how to clean them, how to mix primary colors into secondary, and we just kinda played around a bit writing out names in paint. Just before fall break I had them practicing portraits and pigs so one of these might become our first real painting project. We also had an opportunity to work with modeling clay and real clay in the first 9 weeks making fish!

Disaster Strikes in the Kiln Room!

Bad news for several of my classes.....I fired my last batch of clay projects yesterday over fall break so they would be ready to paint next week. These projects were for the Fall Festival Night in my room as part of an art gallery showing.

We worked so hard getting all the classes projects ready before fall break so they could dry and be fired in time. I put in so many extra hours and really pushed the kids to get these done, I had several 4th graders come in during recess to finish their project.

So you can imagine perhaps some tears as I opened the kiln and found 4 shelves of completely melted projects....2 whole classes and 1/2 of 3 other classes. I have no idea whether I did something wrong or if something is not right with the kiln, but I am incredibly sorry to all the students whose projects were in there. Some of my favorite clay pieces of pie, clay fish, and clay portraits were in there. As well as these amazing leaf bowls!

So I may or may not try these projects again with the students, but I apologize to any parents in advance that several classes just may not have clay projects on fall festival night, but perhaps I can show off some of the students amazing 2-d work.

1st and 2nd graders collages

Both 1st and 2nd grade had been working on collages last week.












1st graders learned about geometric shapes and overlapping. They created a collaged robot with colored paper. We practiced cutting shapes without pencils and using only a little bit of glue.












2nd graders were shown images of abstract art by Henri Matisse, we talked about what we saw in his artworks and how even unrealistic representations of things still trigger our brains to recognize images of things we know.

We also talked about overlapping, and the difference between geometric and organic shapes. They were to use both in the abstract paper collage. Many of the students learned from their classmates how to take it a step further by making the collage 3-d. It was so wonderful to see them helping each other and acting like mini-teachers.