Samburu Necklaces

I came across Once Upon An Art Room’s project on Pinterest and thought it was a great idea. It’s a project that I’ve never even thought about attempting because who has enough beads to make all those necklaces with 4 classes of fourth graders? Not this poor art teacher. But I was just not thinking like a crafty art teacher needs to think these days! After seeing Once’s project I was ready to go out and buy my very affordable pack of 100 paper plates! I thought the kids might not like the idea of trying to turn an ugly white paper plate into a beautiful Samburu necklace but I was WRONG! They are loving it and doing a fabulous job.
Check out some of our necklaces so far:

Putting the shapes out to pasture

Did you like that? Shapes… Out to pasture? Ha! Sorry, it’s hard to come up with catchy titles ALL the time.

So kindergarten has been making these super cute cow paintings. Where did I see this idea? On Pinterest of course! Check out my super smart special almost first graders and their cows!

Reflections of Summer

Mrs. Osborne and the third graders are SO ready for summer and it’s showing in our sunglasses!
Third started their final project this week by creating some black frames and then making the lenses to in them. They had enough time to sketch out what they had planned in the coming months and we will finish coloring next week. I’m still debating on having them mount the sunglasses to a bright piece of paper.
Ps – If you do this with your kiddos, get your camera ready because they all look hilarious when they finish making the frames and decide to try them on. I’ll share a pic of my “art nerds” tomorrow!

Watermelon Self-Portraits

First graders started these cute self portraits last week and I think they will end up taking three weeks total. The first week, we drew in pencil and then traced in sharpie. This week, we used the Crayola multicultural crayons to color our skin as well as our eyes and hair. Some of the kids finished that in Ike to start painting their watermelons. Next week we will finish the watermelon and the background. I think they are turning out so well!

Van gogh’s Chair

I just started a project with fifth grade this week. I’ve seen it on several blogs and Pinterest so I’m not sure of the original source. This is the link to the site I have been using as an example. We are making one kind of big change though – instead of making the chair a pop up, we are just creating a normal background and then making a separate chair out of an index card that can be moved around.
This first class we looked at the original painting and reviewed what we already know about Van Gogh and his style of painting. Then we started creating our backgrounds. Next week we will finish up our backgrounds and start on the chairs. I’ve created a little step by step slideshow to hopefully help with this process. Click here and let me know what you think of the video! I used the ProShow app on my iPad to make the slideshow. It was super easy and I highly recommend it! I only have the free version right now but will be purchasing the $4.99 upgrade.

Father’s Day Cuteness!

I found this on Pinterest and thought it was the cutest idea for Father’s Day.
These are pictures of my example but I’ll be posting pictures of the kids’ soon!

Happy Earth Day!

To celebrate Earth Day with my first graders, we talked about the saying, “The Earth without Art is just Eh”. They loved it and thought it was hilarious saying, “Eh.” Silly kids.
So then we discussed some Earth Day facts and pretended to be the hippies at the original Earth Day. Then we got down to business and started painting on our newspaper. We drew a big circle and then used a crayon to write the quote around it. Then we painted our earth and if they finished that in time, they were allowed to paint the background with any colors they wanted.
They turned out colorful and great and they had a blast. Perfect.