Christmas ornaments

Air dry clay with sparkle paint and yarn! They made cycles and wreathed. Super easy and great fun:-) I let each student make two. I also gave some upper grades to do candy canes. Just forgot to take pics!

Veteran's Day poppies

To honor the veterans visiting our school on Monday I had my students create art using poppies as the main theme... Here is a sampling if how they turned out! I was excited:-)

2nd grade

Prek/kindergarten

3rd grade

4th grade

Expressive Square Self-Portraits - 3rd grade

This was a new project that I found in a school arts magazine. The kid were to use a pattern out of squares and or triangles to make a self-portrait. Everyone has looooved the results! Some could have turned out better, but my son got sick right in the middle of this project so I had to take a few days off and not all substitutes have an art background, but overall I love the results! We just started off with a bunch of brightly colored one inch squares and practiced with pattern and making gongs out of the squares and triangles ( houses, snakes, cars, etc) then we planned out our portraits and glued them down when we were happy with results. Outlined in black paint then cut out around paint. It was hard to get the third graders to understand that the need to leave some construction paper around the black paint. Some got it some didn't. Then glued down onto another, cut it out and so on and so forth. This project took about 4-5 40 minute classes before we finished. 

Kandinsky Circles

This ended up being a great end of the year project with water colors for fifth grade ( and some third). They just made a grid, drew targets in each on, and experimented with color relationships. They enjoyed focusing on the painting, but I didn't mind the chatting so much because they were working and I got a lot of compliments from other teachers

!

Third Grade: City Scapes

For third grade, for some reason, I always end up doing "scapes." Seascapes, landscapes, cityscapes. I borrowed this scape from Deep Space Sparkle, but instead of doing it in Sharpie, I let them use crayons and markers. Before this project, my students do the 3D Line Design, so they already have a good idea of how to feel in a space with lines, patterns, and textures. It took my 3rd graders two 45minute class periods to draw and color their cityscapes.

Monet's Watergarden

(display of daisies and watergarden)

I thought this project would be fun for my third graders for the beginning of Spring, and it was!

First day, I read a book on Monet, and showed some bigger prints of his work.

Then, I walked them through drawing the bridge, pond and lily pads(big circles with little circles on top) very lightly so they would have some gidlines when they painted.

Then I gave them teal, white, pink, and purple to put the first layer of tempera paint.

They painted Xs, with teal and white paint,big and small above the bridge, then painted verticle lines below the bridge with the teal and white, and the lily pads (but not the flower)then a layer of teal on the lilypad.

They painted the bridge with the purple.

Second day, I put ut the same colors as the class before (in case they need to finish), plus y ellow, blue, and a different green than teal.

I told them to go over their Xs, lily pads and verticle lines with the 2nd green and yellow. Then add touches of blue to their pond, and chose a color for their flowers.

They also were allowed to add little pink or purple dots to the verticle lines below the bridge to

make flowers. They were also asked to add some blue lines to their bridge to make it look more 3D.

After they were done we discussed what time of day it might be in our painting, as Monet often painted the same thing, but at different times of day so it looked different.

* I think next time I do this project I might let them choose what they want to draw in their watergardens.