2nd grade wild things!

The second graders and I read the book "Where the Wild Things Are." We looked closely at the wild, made up creatures we saw in the book. We noticed how they looked like a combination of several animals put together. After reading the book and discussing the creatures, each student listed three animals. They then drew the head of their first animal with the body of the second animal and the feet of the third animal. They did several of these until they had a favorite new creature.
We then drew our new creature into a piece of flat styrofoam. We used a brayer and rolled ink over the styrofoam. By pressing the styrofoam on to the paper we were able to get a print of our creature that we drew. These came out awesome! We did three different colors, cut them out and glued them to black paper. We finished these by writing "Wild Thing" across the bottom.
The students learned the concept of basic printmaking techniques as well as balance and design when gluing and writing on the black paper.

1st grade robots

The first graders learned the difference between geometric shapes and free form shapes. We talked about how geometric shapes are shapes with names, like circle, square, oval, rectangle etc..A free form shape is a shape without a name - or a made up shape.
To help reinforce geometric shapes, I had the kids use different colored construction paper to cut out geometric shapes to make a robot. Their robot could only be constructed using geometric shapes. They had a blast putting together their robot as well as thinking about what kind of robot to make. They made buttons that said things like: make my room or clean my room. Ahhh, if we only had a robot to do all things WE do around the house....what would your robot do?

5th grade Statue of Liberty

I couldn't be more pleased with how this project turned out. This was the first time I ever tried this lesson. I found it on a website called www.deepspacesparkle.com This art teacher featured this project and I knew my 5th graders could do it. It was perfect this year marks Lady Liberty's 125th anniversary!
We started out by learning facts about the Statue of Liberty. We discussed the relationship between The United States and France and how France gave the statue to the U.S. as a gift. As the statue was being built in France, the base was being built here in America. Did you know that the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall? Also did you know that each one of the rays represents each of the 7 continents? Well....now you do! :)
We then began a step by step drawing process of the Statue of Liberty. I drew on the board and the kids drew along with me. This step by step process broke the drawing down into manageable steps. We learned about 3 dimensional shapes and perspective when drawing the pedestal. We added a horizon line and buildings to represent the city. All was outlined in Sharpie marker and then the statue and water were painted with watercolor. The background was marker/crayon.
Pretty great, huh?!

First grade painted pumpkins

The first graders learned about warm colors by painting a piece of white paper using only red, orange and yellow paint. While the paper was wet, we ran a popsicle stick through it creating lines. This taught us about visual texture.When the paper dried, we drew and cut out two large pumpkins. We glued the pumpkins to black paper and used brown paper/or green paper to cut out stems. Some students added some vines and leaves with green paper to create that "just picked off the vine" pumpkin. We finished them off with cutting out leaves using our scraps from the painted paper.
This project reinforced cutting skills as well as color mixing and texture. They turned out great - perfect for fall.

4th grade fall pumpkins

Just for fun we decided to take a break for our current project (a Picasso portrait) to make a fun, fall pumpkin. We started with 5 strips of orange paper stacked on top of each other and folded in half. We cut on the fold and added a fastener in the middle. We spread the strips out in a star pattern in front of us and poked a hole at the end of each strip with another fastener. We made a stem and leaf, put that on our fastener and then gathered each orange strip going around the star in order. When the fastener was closed we puffed out the strips to distribute the weight better and voila! I give you a festive, fall centerpiece!!

4th grade - Picasso's 3 musicians

In 3rd grade the students begin learning about Pablo Picasso and cubism. In 4th grade we take that knowledge and expand on it by learning about Picasso's painting, "The Three Musicians." (last picture posted here) We looked at this painting and then the students re-created in collage style. The painting itself is often mistaken for a collage because of the geometric shapes. The students had a few criteria to consider:
1st - it must have 3 people in it wearing masks like the painting
2nd - there must be at least 2 instruments in the picture
3rd- they must include a dog - there is a dog in the painting and it is hidden
4th - they must include elements found in the painting

I was so impressed with the attention to detail and the creativity these students put forth. They really turned out great!

Look for a grade to come home soon - we will keep these projects for consideration for the art show.