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.

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.

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.