Off with their heads!!!

I love these playing card self portraits so much! You can find examples of these all over the Internet on the art Ed blogs. They are always great and I decided to try my hand at them with my 5th graders. I believe I attempted this with some older kids many years ago when I taught middle school grades but these are turning out much better than I remember.  🙂

We used photo booth on the Mac to take their pictures – printed out two copies (unless they wanted to be a joker) and then they drew their own designs. I put up examples of playing cards to help them but they could do their own thing if they wanted. 

   
    
   

   
 

Here are some of the finished pieces!

   
    
    
   

Never Eat Soggy Waffles

Never Eat Soggy Waffles!

Great advice, right?! This was the wisdom one of my 4th graders shared with her class when they were trying to remember the order of the cardinal directions as we were drawing our compass roses.

The kids have done a great job designing and creating these with a compass and ruler. We have started painting them and will finish by mounting them to cut up road maps. 

I found this awesome lesson at Artisan des Arts! 🙂 

   
    
 

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

   
    
    
    
    
   

Cursive Name Bugs

Third graders will be starting to hone their cursive writing technique next week in art class. The kids are always so excited about learning to write cursive. Last year I tried a cursive writing project with them for Dia de Los Muertos. It was pretty difficult so I thought I would try something less so this time. 

After some practice with letters and their names, we will be making name bugs. A few of the kids noticed mine the couple of days and are pretty excited about getting started. 

Here is mine, step by step and I’ll be sure to share their when complete! 

   
   

Finished!

  

Here are a few of the kids’ in progress:

Collin   
Aria

 
Ciara

   
Noel

 

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. 🙂 

   
         

  

   
      

Snowmen at Play

This is a fun project I came across on Artsonia by Blue Mountain Elementary students. I love the different perspective and that each picture can still be individualized.
I’ve shared pictures of the step by step process so far. We will share more when they are complete!

Monarchs for Los Muertos

First graders are getting in on the Dia de Los Muertos fun with their monarch paintings. We drew with sharpies, colored with crayon, and will be painting next week with watercolors!
Instead of a directed drawing, I decided to just show them quickly how I draw a butterfly and then let them go for it.

UPDATE:
A couple of the classes have painted their flowers this week and they are so pretty.

Draw Big or Go Home

The first graders did such a great job on their snow day self portraits, I decided to do this lesson I saw on Art Projects for Kids. It can difficult to get children to draw big sometimes, so really forcing the issue and giving them specific measurements and requirements helped. We followed APFK’s directions for the most part but I gave them options for a couple of variations as well.
In the first class, we discussed Chuck Close and his amazing paintings. Next we drew our pictures with pencil and then traced with Sharpies. That pretty much took up the whole class so next week we will paint them. I’ve already had kids asking if they have to paint their real skin color or if they could paint crazy colors. I really don’t care either way. Just looking at the drawings, I know they will be super cute and filled with personality!

UPDATE:

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!