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.

                    

Shaving Cream Peacocks

My school has started an after school enrichment/tutoring program called LEAPS, which stands for Lottery for Education: Afterschool Programs. This program gives the school opportunities to have after school enrichment activities that enhance and reinforce the schools curriculum. Both myself and the other art teacher at my school, Mr. Stephens, have been allowed to have an art club. Between the two of us, there are 2 art clubs offered each day, Monday through Thursday. I have the Monday/Wednesday classes, and he has the Tuesday/Thursday classes. The classes are small for now, and we each have another teacher in the room with us. I have been having a blast with the classes. With only 5-7 kids at a time, you can do so much more and get even messier. The first project that we did is the shaving cream peacocks that are pictured below. I sprayed shaving cream on the tables and let the kids play in it for a few. Then I showed the students how to splatter and drip liquid watercolors onto the paint, and then use the back end of a brush to drag through the shaving cream to marbleize the paint. Then we pressed watercolor paper into the shaving cream, lifted it off and scraped off the shaving cream. We did this twice, making sure to have some areas that were more blue for the body in the second print. The next week, we cut the paper up into peacock shapes, and added construction paper in for added contrast. Everything was outlined with sharpies, and of course we had to glue on wiggle eyes. They really liked making the eyes two different sizes and colors!

I have a lot more projects planned such as origami, toilet paper tube creations, three dimensional stars and more. Right now they are finishing up a bug made from bread and glue. I will post pictures when they are finished.

Help for wishing4one

I have been asked for some inexpensive, fun projects for kindergartners by wishing4one. I hope you come back and see this blog. I have a lot of ideas.....for example...I like to read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle and then give the children tissue paper ovals that they can overlap to create their own caterpillar. Then there is a story quilt. I read them an appropriate story, and the class splits the story up into sections, one per student, which they draw on 6" square papers. Then the pieces are "stitched" together by punching holes in the corners and tying the squares together with yarn. You can also get cardboard and have the students take glue and draw a picture on the cardboard with the glue. After the glue is dry, you can brush paint over the glue and print the cardboard on other paper. I also like to take paper and fold it in half, then open the paper and drip a couple paint colors on the paper, fold the paper in half again, then open it and let it dry. After it is dry, the students can add legs and eyes and cut it out to create a cool looking bug.

These are just a few lessons that I do with my Kindergartners, but stay tuned for more, including the calico cats that will be posted this week. Wishing4one...I hope this helps you, if not, let me know and I will try some other things.