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.

                    

1st grade monster pinch pots

The first grade curriculum for this 9 weeks calls for the students to make a pinch pot. I decided that we would take the pinch pots and turn them into monsters. I gave each student a ball of clay, and taught them how to create their pinch pots, by sticking their thumb into the ball of clay, and then "quacking" (pinching) their clay, thereby forming a pinch pot. Next, we turned them sideways, and added eyes, teeth, tongues, hair, horns and other assorted parts to create our monsters. After firing, the students painted their monsters. I am in the process of putting them in the display case now. Here are a few of them I thought you might enjoy.

Illuminated Manuscripts

One of my favorite lessons to teach is Illuminated Manuscripts. If you are not familiar with illuminated manuscripts, this is a manuscript that is enhanced through the use of decorated initials. Technically, the term Illuminated Manuscript only applies to the decorations that have gold or silver paint applied to them, but now, this term applies to all decorated initials.

Now back to my classroom... I like to teach this lesson to many different grade levels. With the younger classes, it help with letter recognition, and with older students, it helps to reinforce the additions of details to their artwork. This year I decided to do this lesson with two different grade levels, first and fifth. Both grade levels worked with foil, the first grade with silver tooling foil, the fifth grade with a matte black foil. After designing their initial on a 6x6 inch piece of paper, they were given a piece of foil of the same size to transfer the design to (here is a hint though, there needs to be some form of padding under the foil, such as newspaper. If the foil is directly on a hard surface, the design can't be transferred to the foil. The foil needs to "bend" for the lines to be embossed into the surface). After transferring the design onto the foil, then the students added color. The first graders used colored sharpies to add color onto the silver foil, while the fifth graders used colored pencils to add color to the black foil. You should know that the black foil is much thinner, and therefore more likely to rip, and the only colored pencils that we are able to use were Prismacolors, as other brands would not show up on the foil.

Snow Day!

So we had a snow day here in Nashville. See? Snow.

So what did I do on this fabulous gift of a snow day? I spent it at school preparing for the first grade music program/art show that is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday). I know, I'm horrible, and should be flogged for wasting a snow day, but I didn't want to lose a whole day of work time. I had a lot of work to do for this art show. Anyways, my first graders created chalk pastel snowmen, using glue to outline the snowmen and chalk to color them in. I sprayed the chalk pictures with 3 coats of hairspray, but for some reason it was still coming off on my hands, so I resorted to the last thing I would ever recommend for a child's art project...lamination. I never, ever laminate children's artwork, as you can really mess up the art, and with the amount of artwork that I deal with, I would go through thousands of dollars worth of lamination. But since this was chalk, and I didn't want their artwork damaged, I relented and spent an hour laminating their snowmen, and another hour cutting them out. After that, I hung them up in the hallway. What do you think?

Now for the kicker... I spent all day getting ready for the art show and guess what happened? They canceled school again tomorrow (Tuesday) so the music program/art show is canceled until further notice. Serves me right for wasting a snow day!

Aboriginal Handprints

This is a lesson that I have done with my first graders. As a class, we look at and discuss aboriginal art, and then I give them a piece of paper, and have them trace their hands with a pencil, three times. I want them to overlap the hands. After the hands are drawn, I give them black sharpies, and have them trace over their pencil lines. Next, I talk to them about patterns, and then give them colored sharpies and the students draw patterns on the hands. Finally, the students pick a color to paint the background. I really like to use opalescent paints for the background, it gives the pictures a little shine.

First Grade Cityscapes

I have just finished a great lesson with my first graders. They learned about cityscapes, by creating a crayon resist painting, using crayons and watercolors.




We started by folding the paper in half horizontally, and drew an outline of a cityscape on the top half of the paper. The students pressed hard with their crayons, so that they can transfer the drawing onto the bottom half of the paper by refolding the paper, and rubbing it with something hard (we used the handles of our scissors). The transferred image is light, so the student trace over it with their crayons, and then color in their buildings, again pressing hard. Once the buildings are colored in , the student paint one side of their paper with blue watercolors, and the other side black. This way, they have a night and day picture.