Sunburst Paintings

My fifth graders started these sunburst paintings today.  They were fully engaged and enjoying the freedom to experiment with color mixing.  I can’t wait to see their finished products!  Thanks to  Small for Big for such a great idea!

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Picasso, Primativism, Paint, and Pastels

I saw this project on A Glimmer of Light and decided it would be a fun project to do with my 5th graders. They get so caught up in making things realistic and perfect, this project encourages them to do just the opposite and let the funky chicken out. And while we were working on these, I remembered another chicken project I have done with Kindergarten and thought it would be a great time to review color-mixing with them and then hang the Kinders’ and the 5th grader’s work together!

First the 5th grade work:

Are these not hilarious?! I love them and the kids loved them too.

Here are some kinder-chickens.

  
And here is the final bulletin board with bothe grade’s artwork!

Crayola Color Sticks

Holy Color Sticks, Batman! 5th graders made these!
I bought a (fairly) new product by Crayola earlier this year called Color Sticks. I thought this would be a good time to pull them out and let the kids try them. They are like color pencils except without that pesky wood around the color that you have to sharpen every two minutes. They look great on color construction paper which is how we used them.
The first class was spent drawing the pumpkins and then tracing our pencil lines with glue. We discussed the fact that they are in fifth grade now and should know how to manipulate the glue with ease. Amazingly, they all seemed to take that to heart and did a great job with drawing with glue.
The next class was spent coloring and they did a great job. The color sticks are bright and blend nicely. Check out where they are so far.

Sun Stone Prints

Fifth graders are also making the Aztec sun stones but they are using printmaking as their medium.

We started by painting the background with orange, yellow, and gold paint. They created foam printing plates and were totally impressed with the process. They only made the face for their prints and then used other stamps I’ve created to add to them. They are turning out beautifully!

Jasper Johns Inspired

I’ve posted about both of these projects before but I’ve never had the classes make both projects at once or hung them together. I love it!

I love the dirty, messy quality of some of them. I like the flag as the background for the second one. I think the third one has a watercolor look to it. And I love the primary colors in the last one. Enjoy!

Art Journal: Weaving

After taking a few weeks off from art journaling, we are cracking the spines and jumping back into filling our pages with personal and meaningful artwork. Today was a catch up day so I let the kids have some free time with their books to get them back into the journaling. Before the end of the class, I showed them a bit about what we would be doing next week: mixed media weaving. I encouraged the kids to bring in scraps from home to add to the scraps I’ll have for them to use. Here is my example. I’ll post pics of theirs as we go!

Fifth Grade Fish

Check out some of the awesome koi fish by my fifth graders! We are looking at Asian art in all grades right now. After discussing some of the stories about koi fish and looking at lots of pictures of real and drawn koi, they started sketching their own. Next week, we will paint them with watercolor. I’m super impressed with how well they are doing so far.

School Spirit Zentangles

Back in October I posted about all of our Art to Remember projects. Fifth. Graders are starting this week on their zentangle paw prints. They are looking great and are coming up with some nice backgrounds to make them different from their neighbors.
They started by sketching out the paw print with pencil and then adding the lines in the background. Next, they traced everything with Sharpies as well as added the zentangles inside the paw. They finished them up by using school colors to color in the vivid background.

Most are still in progress but a few have already finished.

Piles and Piles and Piles

Of ORNAMENTS!

I found this picture on Pinterest a couple of years ago and I pinned it with intentions of trying it with my 5th graders.

I didn’t attempt it until this year.  Mrs. Crisco over at Color It Like You Mean It! also made these and they are so pretty.  The kids are loving it and they are doing a fantastic job.  Can’t wait to see them all displayed!

 

 

Art Journal: Tree of Life

This will be our last art journal post for a bit. We are taking a break to celebrate the seasons with some larger-scale pieces. For this page, we looked at and discussed many different versions of the Tree of Life/Knowledge before creating our own versions. We started with a background and then painted the tree black. I gave them the full ROYGBIV in paint for them to use for the leaves. I also gave them some sequins and shiny things if they wanted to add some special leaves. They turned out great and these are just a few!

I love how this student used part of the picture in her book as part of her painting!