Value Pumpkins

A-corny Jokes!

Sharing some corny jokes to go along with our fall acorn paintings! 

Fall, Halloween, and El Dia de Los Muertos

Lots of fun projects happening the last couple of weeks! 

   
    
   
 Deep Space Sparkle always has amazing ideas. I adapted her 5th grade lesson for my first graders and they absolutely loved it!   

    
    
Kinders worked hard on their folk art kitties! Thanks to Art Projects for Kids for this great idea!    
    
    
   

A Plethora of Pumpkins

What? I love alliteration. 

Check out some of our pumpkin art from various grade levels. 🙂 🎃

   
    
   

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.

Anatomy of an Acorn

First graders have been working on their painting skills by learning to use value to show form. We also integrated their lesson of labeling things in a scientific diagram by learning about and labeling the parts on an acorn. They are really turning out well.

Starry Night in the Pumpkin Patch

I tried something new with second grade this year when we talked about Van Gogh and Starry Night. Instead of adding the little town, we added some pumpkins. We also discussed overlapping and space while drawing our pumpkins.

Fall Leaves Radial Design

Our next art journal entry includes warm colors, painted paper, radial design, and fall leaves. We painted a page in our books black and while that dried, we painted three strips of white paper with reds, oranges, and yellows in different textures and patterns. Then we cut out small leaves and arranged them in a radial pattern and glued them down. They are turning out vibrant and beautiful!

Kids examples!

Gratitude Cafe

Inspired by Jason Mraz and his thoughts on gratitude…

For the Thanksgiving season, my second graders discussed miniatures and how important detail can be in a work of art. They created miniature cornucopia collages and they turned out so vibrant and cute and I love them. With our crazy schedule in November, I have one Kindergarten class that is finished with one lesson and if I had started the next lesson with them this week, they would get even farther ahead of the other classes. So I decided to do a Thanksgiving Painted Paper Turkey. It’s a one-class deal and they turned out so great! Check out the results along with the colorful and thoughtful board they were hung on. : )

A cool new DIY border I saw on Pinterest! Just take a long strip of bulletin board paper and cut into long 3-4″ wide strips. Accordion fold and scrunch then carefully pull apart and re-scrunch as you’re stapling around the boarder. It looked much better than I thought it would and it was way easy!!

Delving into Dia De Los Muertos!

One of my newest joys is teaching about Dia De Los Muertos or “Day of the Dead.” It is such a meaningful and colorful day with so much artistic influence in the celebrations. I am in love with sugar skulls and catrinas and yarn paintings!

My school has started a Spanish Club this year and the kids are learning to speak but they are also learning lots about the culture. Next week we will be painting faces and hopefully making some small art projects to go along with learning about the holiday. The bottom picture has four examples of the face painting they will get to choose from at the next meeting!

I’ve started talking about it with my first graders this week and we are making some calaveras. Here are some of the results. I’ll add more as we finish!