Friday, February 21, 2014

Art Show Winners!

Superintendent's Art Show Winners! 

I was so excited to find out that four of my kids won awards at our Superintendent's Art Show! All the elementary schools in our county submit pieces every year for this show.  They have three levels by grades; Kindergarten/1st grade, Second/Third Grade, Fourth/Fifth Grade. I have to brag on my kids, they got first place in every level! I teach some gifted young artists.

1st Place- 1st grade student


1st Place- 3rd grade student

1st Place- 5th grade student


Honorable Mention- 2nd grade student

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Art Snow (show) day

What to do on a snow day?

Last week we were hit with a fabulous snow storm. I finally got to see my big snow of the year! Ask me in June how much I loved it when I'm making up all these snow days on beautiful sunny days. The above photo was the view out my front door with the snow piling up on my car.  

What did I do on my snow day? I slept in!! And after I enjoyed sleeping in, I worked on mounting pieces for the Superintendent's Art Show.  Below are some of the pieces from my students this year. 

3rd Grade-Positive/Negative leaf prints

2nd Grade-Piet Mondrian

5th Grade-Georgia O'Keeffe

5th Grade-Rene Magritte

3rd Grade-Georgia O'Keeffe

3rd Grade-Day of the Dead


1st Grade-Matisse


Kindergarten-Olympic clay medal


Kindergarten-Winter tree landscape 

3rd Grade-Chalk Leaves 

3rd Grade-Monet 

5th Grade-Art Clock 


 1st Grade-Snowman perspective 


4th Grade-3D Topography sculptures




Monday, February 17, 2014

Olympic Kick Off!

It's time for the Winter Olympics!

This year for the 2014 Winter Olympics we decided to do a school wide project. The kids and teachers have loved it so far.

We started our unit off by having TOGA TUESDAY!
Our staff and students came to school in togas.  I spent the week before teaching the students and faculty how to tie a toga. It was such a fun day seeing all the different types of designs. 
Here is the link for Toga Instructions 

At the end of the day we did our school wide torch run. All our students (in their cute togas) lined the walls so they could cheer for our torch runners. We had our student council run our tissue paper torch down every hallway as the Olympic theme music played over the intercom.
 This is our Olympic cauldron which will stay throughout the Olympics at our school.  Because of all our recent snow days we might be doing the Olympics in March.



Here I am in my Athena costume. I had to represent the goddess of wisdom and the arts!
Every student is making a clay Olympic medal for this unit. We have been very busy researching ideas for them to use.

Here are a few things we have been learning about in Olympic Art class:
-Greek Gods and Goddesses (mythology fits nicely into their literacy unit)
-Ancient and Modern Olympic history
-Countries and flags
-Geographical locations (using the amazing Google Earth)
-Torch relay and cauldron
-Olympic winter sports
-Olympic rings and meanings
-Climate
-History of Olympic medals






Sunday, February 2, 2014

"I Ain't Gonna Paint No More"
By Karen Beaumont (Author) and David Catrow (Illustrator)


 This is one of my favorite books to read to my little ones.  We really like rhymes in elementary school.  And the illustrations are fabulous and very artsy.  This is a project I did with my first graders.  We read the book about a little boy who loves to paint, he loves it enough to paint himself.

Next, I divided them into small groups around the room.  Each group gets a large sheet of white bulletin board paper.  They picked one person from their group to pose on the paper while the rest of the group traced their outline in pencil.  Now it's time for paint!

                                                 
 I gave the groups one paint color at a time and rotated colors around the room. They had to work together to determine what to paint, what colors to mix together, how much paint to use, etc.  It's a great project for students to learn how to work together and listening to each others ideas and suggestions.  It's also great for learning about colors, patterns, and shapes.


Once the entire body is painted they have to dry.  This is probably the hardest part for me.  Finding a place to lay all these giant paintings without having them drip or fold on themselves.  The next class period students were very excited to see their dried paintings.  The last step is having them cut out their painted people.  Students are each given a pair of scissors and work together to follow their traced lines.  

After that we staple them in the halls.  It is a quick fun project that adds lots of color and movement to our plain walls.