My first graders have been learning about outerspace so I thought I would jump in and have some fun with foreshortening with some astronaut portraits. I made a step by step for how to draw. I think we will use oil pastels or crayons along with paint (mostly for the background.)
I’ll add more photos once we finish! 🚀👨🏽🚀🛸🌝☄️🌎
These are the cutest snowmen! I found them over at Exploring Art (Abby Schukei) and the kids are loving them. It has been a really fun way to learn about creating form by using value.
Here is mine (which I did in paint but then decided that I liked the idea of using oil pastels better.)
This is an accessories-free snowman so they can really focus on just the shading and form.
Some student examples!
A few bulletin boards I’ve been working on…
This one still has a couple of spots waiting to be filled! 🙂
Here some more reindeer with their applications attached. Love these.
I found this great project at the end of last year and have almost waited too late to do it this year. It will probably be our final project for the year and the kids are loving it. The original lesson can be found over at Art Rocks! She was inspired by the Monster Mama book by Liz Rosenburg, illustrated by Stephen Gammell. I thought I would also tie in some art history in addition to the literacy aspect by showing them Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Like I said, they are loving it.
The first day, I introduced them to the book and the painting and then we drew our screaming faces with pencil. Most classes also had time to trace all of their pencil lines with Sharpie.
The next class was spent discussing how awesome oil pastels are and how to blend them.
The final class will be spent experimenting with using a straw and paint to blow out the top of the head. They are so excited about this step and I’m looking forward to sharing the results.
Check out where we are so far…
2014 is the Year of the Horse and the Chinese will be celebrating on January 31st. Several of my classes will be creating Chinese New Year inspired art over the next couple of weeks. I’ll post some examples of their projects here. I have step-by-step photos for some of the projects as well.
Kinders will be creating some simple dragon puppets and working on fine motors skills and cutting some pretty intricate lines. They will also be using the accordion fold to make the torso of their dragon.
First graders are also making dragons but they are making their own heads and creating the body out of a paper chain.
With Third Graders, after discussing Chinese New Year traditions vs. American New Year traditions, I give them a piece of paper and we draw dragons but they don’t know that they are drawing dragons at first. I just give them instructions to draw a triangle at the top of the paper, then draw a triangle at the bottom. Connect the two triangles with a curvy line. After we draw in the details of the head they will guess what we are drawing and then I can show them my finished example. We discuss pattern and they have to create the body using only lines, shapes, and colors in a pattern symmetrically on each side of the center line of the dragons body. They can add wings and a background as well. I was really pleased to see some of them using other objects we had discussed, like the red lanterns.
Second graders will be doing some paper lantern art, found on Pinterest, but it only leads to a picture. Let me know who I can give credit, if you know!
And fourth grade will be making some Chinese scroll paintings in the next couple of weeks.
Looking forward to seeing all of these awesome projects hung together!
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.
Fourth graders have made these awesome nutcrackers for several years but I just never blog about them. This is the year! I found this project originally on Art Projects for Kids website. It’s simple, but like most simple projects, if its colored neatly, it looks awesome. I encourage the kids to be creative and I tell them they can color them like the classic nutcrackers or they can turn them into a parody or a more fun version of a nutcracker. Here are a few from this year!
Yesterday was an early release day for my school system and all of the art teachers were brought together for a little staff development. I love getting together with my fellow art teachers! They are all such creative people and bring different things to the table. We shared lessons with each other and I’m so glad because I was kind of stuck on this lesson for fifth grade.
I found a cute picture on Pinterest and tried it out on Monday with the first class. It went okay but not near as well as I had hoped. *superhero music* Another art teacher saved the day with one of her lessons she shared. It was so pretty and covered most of the objectives that my other lesson covered but was a little different. This was what I came up with:
1. We started with some practice on some spheres and adding value.
2. Then I passed out these three circles for them to paint. We added the highlight with pencil lightly first, just to make sure we didn’t cover it up by accident.
4. We are using analogous colors to paint each ornament.
5. While those dry, we make the simple background. Using a black sheet of construction paper, we used oil pastels to make the pine branches.
6. Cut out your circles and glue them on, leaving enough space to add the ornament hangers. I used a silver oil pastel to make my hangers.
Simple and beautiful! Thanks Rebekah!
Rebekah recently started her own blog – check it out!
Color It Like You Mean It!
Here are some of the completed projects. I told them they could add snow or whatever in the background. They turned out beautifully!
tinyartroom 