¡Dia de Los Muertos!

Day of the Dead is here. It’s one of my very favorite traditions and the kids love it too! Check out some of the projects we’ve been working on in honor of this special holiday. 

¡Cinco de Mayo!

I’m trying all new projects in honor of the upcoming celebration of Cinco de Mayo. It involves lots of painted paper, printmaking, and collage. Every grade has a project they are going to be working on in the coming weeks so I’ll be sharing as we go. Check out some of our prep work.  Lots of these ideas are coming from the awesome art blog, Painted Paper.  She did an entire art show on art from Mexico.  Beautiful ideas!

Ready for Spring!

Kinders started working on some Spring-inspired pictures this week. We looked at some of Henri Rousseau’s artwork and lots of pictures of beautiful flowers. We also discussed our favorite bugs/spiders/snakes. We talked about how to completely fill our paper with objects, even if that meant that some of the object wouldn’t be seen. This week we are drawing the plants and flowers. Next week we will add the magnifying glass with our favorite bug. We used construction paper crayons for this project, with some help from regular crayons inside the magnifying glass.

Mother’s Day Surprises!

Kinders are starting their artwork for their Mother’s Day gifts! They are loving the mosaic vase and it’s great fine motor practice for many of them.

More painted paper…

My 3rd graders loved making the painted paper birdhouses so much that I decided to find another painted paper project for them to do. I saw it first at (guess where!) Painted Paper, who gives credit to It’s an HSES Arty Party! I actually did my lesson a little closer to the original.
Now, I’m going to make a confession: I have never used coffee filters in an art project. Never! How have I made it this long as an elementary art teacher, without using one of these beloved pieces of round paper?!?!? Mostly because I can never remember to buy some at the store. This year I was lucky enough to inherit a pack when I was moved to a new school.
Our first step was to paint the coffee filters with watercolors. And not just any watercolors but homemade watercolors. I saw this excellent recycling tip somewhere and I can NOT remember where! You just take your old, dried up markers and put them in cups of water and let them sit awhile! They worked perfectly and the kids loved the recycling aspect as much as I did!
Then we painted our paper for our petals. Next week we will cut out the petals and glue everything together!
These area shots of our progress thus far…

I love my job!