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.

                    

Kindergarten is going buggy!

We had the last art show of the year tonight, and it was kindergarten's turn. I figured since all of the students are starting to get antsy, we should make some bugs. They had a blast, and the parents were very pleased. Even the teachers have been commenting about the bright and cheerful pests (I of course mean the art bugs, not the children!) We created the bugs by folding a 9x12 piece of paper in half, and the the students picked three colors to add to their paper, making sure that they picked colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel. Once we added the tempera paint we re-folded the papers and then opened them to dry. The next class time we cut out around the paint, and then added heads, legs, and wiggle eyes. My older students were so jealous!

Youth Art Month

As we art teachers know well, March is Youth Art Month. This month, my classes at Lakeview will be working on some fun projects, including bottle cap flowers for outside the building. To kick off the month, I redid the door to the classroom, as well as one of the bulletin boards in the front of the building. Since the focus is on the art of the students, that is what I used to create these displays.

I also have a lot of art to hang! My plan is to have an "unofficial" school-wide (at least my classes) art show. We have not had a whole school art show in two years, instead, we have individual grade level shows the same time as the music programs. We are continuing this process this year, but I miss the "big" art show, so here comes the unofficial one!

Turtle Time!

The third graders had their art show/music performance this week. I decided to not do something fall related, and went with mixed media turtles. The turtles are drawn with oil pastels, and then the background is painted with watercolors and plastic wrap. The cool designs that should have shown up in the backgrounds didn't really have time to form, because the students were so fascinated with the concept that they kept lifting it up to ooh and ahh. Oh well...

Mayor's Art Show

Every year in Nashville, the Frist Center is host to the Mayor's Art Show. Each school in Metro chooses 2 artworks from each grade level to represent the school, and the artwork is hung in the Frist Center. There are so many schools in Metro that they have to have 2 sessions of the show, and my school was in the first section. Since we have 2 art teachers at the school, I pick one artwork from each grade level, and the other art teacher does as well. Everything is matted in black and backed with foam core, labeled and hung up. Here is what Lakeview Design Center put in the show.

I also take this time to look at what other schools are doing, and "borrow ideas." I found some great ones that I will share with you soon.