Value Disco Balls

Value Disco Balls

Klimt Trees and Kindness Grows

I recently came across the book, Kindness Grows by Britta Teckentrup and just fell in love with it. Then another art teacher posted a project of a tree inspired by Gustav Klimt and I decided I must bring these two things together for one of my grades. That grade is third grade and we will be creating these beautiful trees inspired by two other beautiful trees!

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Collaboration + Black History Month

We got a jump on February and celebrating Black History Month with this collaborative project. Students looked at this article on Beanz (a magazine for kids, code, and computer science) about Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson the ladies also known as The Hidden Figures. They are all mathmeticians, engineers, and pioneers who worked for NASA and helped pave the way for other women in math and science, especially women of color. We also watched this great video from Flocabulary and the kids loved it and even requested to hear it again before class was over.

The project is a two class project and each student will be making a piece of a large poster that features the three Hidden Figures along with a quote from Katherine Johnson. I found this poster on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Can’t wait to share the finished poster hanging proudly in the halls of our school!

Chinese New Year Collaborative Dragon

I came across this super cool project for Chinese New Year at arteascuola.com. Miriam shared some of the process and the end product was so cool! I wanted to share my step by step process here to use with my students as well as with you all! Once we get the final dragon complete, I will share more photos. Until then, please check out Miriam’s page here: Arteascuola

Im going to be honest, I’m doing this with first grade so I’m anxious to see the results of this color wheel. 🤷🏼‍♀️Let’s do this!!

It went so well!!! They were excited and everybody’s turned out great. Next, we will add the petals, symbols for scholarship, friendship, and sportsmanship (my school’s motto). We will then put them all together to create the dragon!

I tried to photograph the steps of making the head but I’m not sure how clear this is. I had to pretty much figure it out on my own just looking at the finished example on Arteascuola.

Snowy Silhouettes

Fourth grade is making these snowy nighttime scenes using value and blending with paint. Before we started in on the real deal, we practiced first with color pencils then with paint. Sharing our steps here!

I’ll share the students’ work when we are finished!

Here’s some of the student work. They were still so creative with the limited use of only silhouettes.

Animal Weavings

Second graders are weaving and they love it! I found this excellent step by step tutorial over at ABC School Art.

Can’t wait to share our finished pieces!

Check out some of my students work!

Monster on the Loose!

My 6th graders have been working so hard on perfecting these two point perspective cities. When they were finished, they had to write a 6 word story to accompany their artwork. It was great to see some kids really flourish with the technical side of it.

On “The Block” with Romare Bearden

Ahhhh, my first post as a middle school teacher! Pretty exciting. 

My 6th graders are currently working on a collage project with me. We are looking at the master of collage, Romare Bearden and his piece, “The Block.” Their goal was to create their own block out of their everyday experiences and places they go. We don’t live in a huge city so they had to be creative and “collect” the places that are important to them. 

We first did an artist study to learn about Bearden and what influenced him. Then they looked closely at “The Block” on The Met’s website to see all of the amazing details and interactions that Bearden observed and was intrigued with. After inspecting his work, they created sketches of what they wanted to include in their own block. 

We are creating our collages using a 28″X11″ piece of poster board and magazines. I can’t wait to see and share what my talented 6th graders create!

Silberzweig Portraits

I first learned of Sandra Silberzweig at a professional development day with my school system’s art teachers. And of course, as new things tend to do, after learning about her I started seeing her stuff everywhere. 

I love her art and all the colors and patterns in it. The kids love it too and other than how colorful it is, they love the funky, stylized aspect of her faces. 

One of my favorites is the cat eating a fish:

And of course the Dia de Los Muertos inspired calavera:

So my first and third graders have been working on their own versions and I thought I would share some of their work in progress:

I will be sure to share their finished pieces too! 

Ancient Egyptian Dioramas

Fourth grade finished their Egyptian king and queen portraits and then we moved on to the pyramids. We used Google Trek to explore the pyramids before we settled into our groups to make a plan for our diorama. They’ve been working so hard on these! Check out our progress: