School-wide art show

I know I haven't blogged in a while, my friend Ted (www.artwithmre.blogspot) has been bugging and bugging me about it, but I have been very busy and a little forgetful! Anyways, now that some big things have been taken off of my plate, now I have time to post some pictures. One of the major things that I was dealing with was a school-wide art show. There are two art teachers here at my school, but with almost 900 students, this is still a lot of work. Most of my classes displayed their prints, but the kindergarteners displayed their bugs, and the third graders had photo collages up.

                    

Crazy beginning of the school year!

It has been quite a school year already, I almost want to start over. My school is almost 100 students over projected numbers, so we have been adding classes and moving students like mad, which means that my schedule has changed as well. Due to personal reasons, I have had to miss about a week and a half of school, and now it is close to the end of the 9 weeks and I am scrambling to get the 3rd and 4th graders projects finished for their upcoming art show. Phew!
On a good note though, the second graders are finishing up their collage projects, and they are turning out well. First the students tissue paper collaged a 9x12 piece of paper for the background. Then they traced their hands on a thicker piece of paper. We took about 20 minutes to brainstorm words that describe personal qualities, which the students then write all over their hands with sharpies. The students then cut their hands out and attached spacers (some plastic beads that were donated to the art room) on the back of their hand, and then glued them to their background. Many of the teachers have been impresses with the range of descriptive words the students have come up with.

Art Show snowmen!

The second graders had their music/art show this evening, and since the music teacher was showcasing Christmas music, I decided to have them do some sort of winter picture. I have many snowmen lessons that I do, but decided to research on pinterest for some new ones. I found a great one here: http://mrsjacksonsartroom.blogspot.com/ (you gotta love pinterest!) Anyway... I fell in love with it, and had to have my students make them. So, 92 snowmen later this is what we had for the art show, and let me tell you, the parents LOVED them! Just in case you were wondering why they were not all in a straight row, they were hung on a wall where there was a ramp and handrails, so they had to be staggered in order to not go behind the hand rail. Unfortunately, I am not tall enough to hang them high enough that this wouldn't be a problem. I'm still waiting on my last growth spurt... it just hasn't come yet!

Ms. Malone's art room is going to the birds!

So my second graders have begun working on collages this week. I wanted to make it fun and simple, so I decided to have them create a flock of birds. Only two classes so far have started, once they are all finished I will take a picture of the whole flock, but for now, here are a few of our little chicks...

I gave each student a pre-cut piece of construction paper, and put a pile of pre-cut patterned paper on their table. The student picked out their patterned paper and glued it to the construction paper, and then set the whole thing aside while they worked on their birds. Using more construction paper, they created their birds. If they showed good craftsmanship by not having excess glue, they could choose three feathers to use as the bird's tail. I hot-glued everything together for them, and then we displayed the birds in the hall. They had so much fun with them, and having the feathers as an incentive to finish it neatly was great too!

I stole this idea!

So have I mentioned lately, that I love Pinterest? I have found some amazing lesson ideas, and this is one of them that I have very cheerfully "borrowed". My 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders worked on monochromatic self-portraits the last 2 weeks. They were assigned to use the "color" of their table (each of the tables in my room is assigned a color, so that I can call specific tables to line up, get their supplies, etc). I have a red, blue, yellow, green, orange, turquoise and a pink/purple table (the basket on the table is one of those colors that could be either pink or purple, I insist on calling it purple, since I detest the color pink, the kids call it pink, just to spite me I think! :P ). Anyways... once the students were done, they placed their papers into basket that were labeled with the colors, this saved me from pulling each class and having to separate them. I hung them up in the hallway today, what do you think?

Paper Coil Sculptures

This is one of the projects that a second grade class completed for the school's art show. We started off by creating a very shallow "box" or "tray" from a piece of black construction paper. I gave them a 12" square piece of black construction paper and showed them how to cut the corners and fold it up to create the box. Then I gave them 1/2" wide strips of paper to create walls within the box. I taught them to fold the ends over and glue the folded ends to the sides of the box. Then we raided the scrap paper box. I demonstrated to the students how to cut strips of various widths of paper and curl them around a pencil or crayon. Then the edge of the coils are dipped into glue and the coil is placed within the box. Each separate area created by the walls in the box is filled in with a different color.

Glue and Pastel Fish

My students love to play with messy materials, and pastels are definitely messy. One way that I keep the pastel situation under control is through the use of glue. I start out by reading a book to my students, such as Rainbow Fish and then give each student a piece of black paper. The students then draw their fish or other undersea creature using pencil. Once the drawing is finished, the students trace over the pencil lines with glue, and then the glue is left to dry. Once the glue is dry, the students color in the fish with pastels, and then I spray hairspray or fixative on the artwork to seal the pastel. When dry, the glue acts like a wall or barrier, which helps keep the pastels from smearing everywhere. I have done this lesson with second and third graders.

Tissue paper sun catchers

My second graders are getting ready to start this new project. It is a sun catcher that is created with tissue paper collage, and a black construction paper silhouette. We start by taking blue and purple tissue paper and ripping it up into small pieces. The tissue paper is glued onto a transparency sheet using liquid starch that I added Crayola Glitter It! to (it gives it a little sparkle that the kids love!) While the tissue paper dries, the students take a piece of black construction paper that is the same size as the transparency and draw a one inch border on it, then draw a tree without leaves that touches all four sides of the border, and then cut it out. Finally, the students glue the trees to their tissue paper. These are a great display on the windows in our school lobby. We also made them last year and displayed them at the local mall.

Color Family Paintings

My second graders are reviewing their color families, which include primary, secondary, warm, cool, tints and shades (as well as neutral, which is not included in this painting, but we review it anyways.) After reviewing the color families, the students began the project by drawing large overlapping leaves that cover the paper. After drawing the leaves, the students outlined the leaves with sharpies and then drew a 6x6 inch grid across their 12x18 paper, which gave them 6 squares. In the first square, the students paint with primary colors, the second with secondary colors, third with cool, the fourth with warm, the fifth with tints, and the sixth with shades. The students love this lesson, and it is a great way to review the color families

Getting buggy in the art room

My second graders finished their required curriculum early, so we decided that we wanted to paint. I decided to have them create a oil pastel resist. We started out by drawing with pencil a large bug of their choice (it could be imaginary) sitting on a flower. Then we outlined with black oil pastels. Next they added some other details with white oil pastel. Finally they painted with watercolors. Some of the classes used Prang watercolors, others used liquid watercolors (I like how bright the colors can be with the liquid watercolors, since they are concentrated)