Indian Corn

I’m loving all of these Indian Corn projects I’ve seen on the art blogs and Pinterest.  I decided to try my own and we will be starting them next week. I made a step by step to show my kids! 😊

Happy Painting! 🎨🖌

Caught Up in Color!

Pretty excited about this project even though it’s been around for awhile. I’ve never attempted it with any grade and I’m not sure why. Probably just not enough hours in the day or classes in the week. But this year I’m giving it a shot with first grade. It’s a fun take on what can be a Halloween project (or not) and uses lines, color, and some 3D effects with the spider. 

I’m posting my step by step pics to use when I’m going through it with my students. I’ll add more with the spider later. We used black crayons to draw the webs and tempera cakes to paint. 

Here are a few finished webs with spiders! I love how colorful they are. The kids did a great job taking their time painting. 

A glimpse of the action

Here’s a few shots of some of our first projects. Reviewing elements with fourth and fifth, learning more about the color wheel and practicing zentangles with third, and using warm and cool colors, shapes, and lines with second. The year is off to great start! 

Warm and Cool Skies

This was an interesting concept to teach my 2nd graders. We looked at the color wheel. We looked at lots of examples of art that used warm or cool colors. We practiced separating the markers into different piles. We discussed why peach and pink are warm colors. We worked REALLY hard. 

This project took us three or four weeks and required lots of patience but I think at the end of it they learned to really appreciate the effort because of how great the outcome. #lifelessons

   
    
    
    
    
   

Continual Line Drawing

I am so loving these continual line drawings of owls that my 3rd graders are working on. It is so hard for some of them to let go of perfection. They look at me like I am absolutely nuts when I tell them they can’t pick up their marker until they are completely finished with the drawing. Luckily, there is a great, short video on the original site for this project. It can be found here: megduerksen.com

The drawing goes quickly but the coloring will take awhile. This also seems to be a great way to squeeze every last drop of ink out of the markers for the year. 🙂 

   
         

  

   
      

Fine Motor Skillz Bracelets

Oh yeah, that’s skills with a Z!!!
So I noticed that many of my Kinders were having some trouble with writing their names and it wasn’t that they didn’t know the letters but more that those sweet little hands couldn’t control their pencil or crayon.  So we started practicing some fine motor skills.  I found some great ideas at Hands On As We Grow.  We practiced tracing lines, tracing our names, writing our names on our own, sorting beads, and stringing those beads onto pipe cleaners for some beautiful bracelets.  We had so much fun it almost makes me want to be a Kindergarten teacher!  

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.

Cockadoodledooing in Kindergarten!

Kindergarteners have been learning some painting procedures as well as their colors, shapes, and lines while working on these roosters. It’s been an adventure to say the least…

Art Elements Infographic

Here’s our first entry into our fifth graders art journal. We created an Infographic to showcase our knowledge of the art elements. I found this at artroom104.blogspot.com through Pinterest.

Chinese Dragons

We are a little late for the Chinese New Year but we discussed the tradition anyway and the kids are really enjoying the project. We are reviewing some of the basic art elements of line, shape, pattern, and color.