Dale Chihuly Chandelier

Who doesn't love Dale Chihuly's mesmerizing glass works!?! I think we are all amazed by his glass masterpieces. 

My kids watched a great video of Dale Chihuly creating art with his team.

Dale Chihuly Gathers and Forms Video 

 My kids barely blink because they are so memorized by his the process. 

The video really helped them to understand the glass making process and it's transformation.  

1. We collected clear water bottles from the school.

2. Clean and cut off the bottoms.

3. Paint the inside with warm and cool colors.

4. Students cut all the dried bottles

5. We used a heat gun to melt the bottles and stretch them out

6. We used wire to twist together 3 bottles (where the neck of the cap is) 

7. Then we twisted the wire onto a long metal piece (from Lowes which is used for closets-about $12)

*Make sure the wire is tight on the bottles and on the metal piece.

Slowly we put everything together. Warm colors on top and cool colors on the bottom.

My maintenance guy was wonderful and made this special metal piece for our chandelier to hang from so it would meet the fire code.

Ta-Da!!

It's lightweight and about as tall as me  5'6".

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It was great surprising the staff and students with it! My fifth graders were very proud of themselves. And I really loved that is was made with recycled plastic and was inexpensive to make.

Collaborative Art Tree Leaves

I always try to do a collaborative school wide project at the beginning of each school year.  

This year we made a CCE tree!

After I went over the usually first day jazz (norms, drills, expectations), it was time to start making some art.  

First, each student choose a leaf shape to trace or they could design their own shape.

Next, they added designs to tell people about who they were. 

(Examples-soccer player, singer, artist, dancer, favorite food, etc.)

Then, they glued their final leaves onto the sheet where I had already drawn the bark with sharpie.

It was a quick project that all students had ownership in making.  I really like how it added some color to our hallway.

Paws

Our school mascot is a coyote.  This year our school got a traveling stuffed animal coyote named "Paws".  She is super adorable!  She gets to spend a week in each class and then she is passed to another classroom.  She has a journal that travels with her so the kids can write stories about her.  I decided to make Paws a photo album of her time in Art and Music class.  

This is Paws cleaning up the Art room at the end of the day.

 Paws and Bongo (the Music room elf on the shelf) playing jingle bells.

Paws loves to play keyboard and howl (Awhooo!)

Paws is practicing the recorder.

Paws loves to play the drums.

Paws is playing the xylophone.

Paws is looking up art projects.

Paws is learning to weave, it's harder than it looks.

Paws helps answer the phone.

Whoops, Paws spilled paint.  She grabs a sponge to clean up her mess.

Paws loves to paint. She painted a picture of a lion.She wear's Ms. Shook's apron to keep her fur clean.

Paws is playing in the 5th graders Chihuly sculpture.

Paws helps load the kiln.

Paws is helping cut yarn for third grade weavings.

We love seeing Paws around school! She is gaining all kinds of goodies from each class. 

Science Lab Decorations

When you become an Art teacher, you also become the school decorator.  We have an adorable science lab that needed a little color.  So the my Art Club kids and I went to work.  

We used inspiration from their Science curriculum:

Weather

Life Cycles

Plants

Animals

Dinosaurs

Electricity

I think it really gave our Science Lab some character.  We wanted to make it more inviting for our students.  We just got cute little science stools to go with the room.  I'm hoping to have a future Art Club project where we paint the center of the stools.  Hopefully, you'll see that in a later post.

Art Club Library Windows

My 5th grade Art Club students are always kept busy with projects that give back to the school.  One of my favorite projects was creating art for the Library windows.  

Our Library has six windows all around it, which is why I called it the fish bowl.  So we decided to create something that would add color to our hallways and help spectators from distracting our young readers in the fish bowl.

The kids made a list of their favorite books.  Then we narrowed it down to twelve. We used foam board and acrylic paint.  We painted the fronts and backs of the six boards.  Since these boards were so large I definitely had to help draw these, the kids had a hard time filling up the space on their own.  The kids split into groups and painted their boards with whatever colors they wanted.  Most of them stuck with the same colors as their books.  I was very impressed with the care they took in making these. 

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You can now see these classic books in the hall and inside the Library!  The foam board sits nicely inside each window.  You can take them out to clean the glass or move them around if you get bored with the same placement.  These have been a big hit at school!  The kids are always really proud to see their artwork on display and being admired.