Salvador Dali Elephants - grade 4/5

This is a project that was just SO much fun. I got the lesson from this website, and I basically followed the instructions to a T.

Class one: Students did a group draw with me, drawing the Salvador Dali inspired elephant in marker (this took the better part of the period.) They also added in lines for the ground and water. Some chose not to put water, which is fine. When they were finished, they took a wet paintbrush and went over the lines, turning it into watercolor. The last thing we did for the day was draw on the shadows. I did a demonstration on the board, and most of them were able to get them, although some did struggle. I wanted to make sure that they got the shadows in during the first class, so that they didn't lose track of which marker they had been using.

Class two: We broke out the chalk pastels and they got to work! As I've said before, chalk pastels are my absolute favorite medium to work with, and I am so happy to be able to show kids how to use them. I did a demonstration about how to tap off the extra dust, so that they don't mix the colors. We practiced blending with our fingers. They were allowed to chose whatever colors and effects they wanted, although most stuck with similar colors to the example I had on the board. When they had finished the background, they cut out the blanket using scrapbooking paper, and glued on decorative jewels as the finishing touch. I'm SO impressed!

 Here's a few pictures of them working on them. They worked SO hard!

Cute story - I told the kids about my blog today, and one of them asked "Do you have a spot for comments?" When I said yes, he said "Does anyone ever comment and say my artwork is good?" Cute, right? I told him any comments I do get are usually more general, about all of the work. I think it's funny that that's where his train of thought went, though!

Winter cardinal art - grade 2

I did a different kind of project with my grade 2's recently, a bit more arts and crafts-y than I usually do.

I found a great example of how to draw a cardinal here. My initial idea was to just have the students do this exact drawing, as I think it's quite beautiful, but then I found some double sided foam stickers and decided it would be more fun (and WAY more compicated) if they did EACH component of the drawing seperately, then layered the foam stickers on each other to make the pictures look 3D.

It's really hard to tell, but all components of the picture are on different levels. The blue backgrounds are mounted onto the white, then the branches are mounted on to the blue. Two back to back foam stickers are mounted on each other to put on the bird, so it really sticks out. Then the flower was stuck on with another foam sticker. The picture has a TON of dimension, but it was hard to capture with my iPhone!

 Some kids opted to color the background using pastels instead of layering tissue paper. It really didn't matter much to me, although I do love the intensity of the tissue.

 Here's some pictures of the projects "in progress". In total, it took 2 periods to complete.

I'm really not a fan of pastels, but they DO have their place. This is the kind of project that they work really well for.

Wise Owls

I'm in week 5 of teaching art, and it's great. Here are some things that I've learned:

• Teaching the art lessons in my OWN classroom - for the first few weeks, I was going into other people's classrooms. I hate being a "traveling teacher", and it just bummed me out not being in my classroom. I'm so comfortable there. As soon as I started bringing the classes over to me instead of going to them, I felt so much better.
• Changing projects up often - in the summer, I laid out what I thought I would teach for the year, plans that I had adapted to work across all grade levels. This ended up being VERY boring. I was dreading teaching the same thing, and I only ended up doing that for about a week and a half before I threw all of that out the window
• Group drawing - this is THE BEST thing I have discovered. Doing guided group drawing produces just the most amazing results, and the kids are always so happy with how their work turns out. I'd really say it's impossible to fail at group drawing.

So basically after having figured those three things out, I'm really enjoying myself. I like that I can't walk down the hallway without kids asking me "When do we have art next?" I love getting hugs. I love that the 6th grade boys are dying to finish their art projects. It's a good feeling.

Anyway, I'm very behind in posting projects, but today I did one that I absolutely adored. I did Wise Owls (les Hiboux Sages) with a grade 2 class, an idea I found here. They turned out CUTE!

I ripped pages from an old dictionary (apologies to the school, but it was published in 1962.) Kids did a group draw with me in pencil. Then, everyone traced their drawing in Sharpie.

Next, they added patterns of their choice to the bellies.

Then, they colored them in using markers.

Here are some finished owls. Aren't they the cutest??
Can you find mine amongst the 2nd graders?

Done with a grade 2 class, in a 1 hour period.