This year has been a bit of a change for me as we are following a district-wide scope and sequence. It has been a year of new projects, new successes and of course of few failures! The art show this year did not have a theme as I have in the past however I did do something new with 3-4th grade. This year I saved all of their art show projects from the fall and in December they picked and labeled them on their own, took Artsonia pictures, and put them in a folder to save until the show. In the spring we did the same thing. It was SO NICE to not have to pick and label as much art this year by myself! I also think it gave the students more ownership over their art show work. I hung the 3-5th art by their classrooms, but K-2nd I still had sorted by project. I will do one blog post per grade level. :-) Enjoy!
KINDERGARTEN:
Little White Owl
Students read the book The Little White Owl by Tracey Corderoy then created their own version. We traced and cut a circle then folded it to become our owl. Students created a moonlit sky with silver crayon and a tree in the foreground for their owl to sit on. We worked on paper manipulation and 3D art and texture (tree bark) for this project!
Apple Tree
Students watched a Brain Pop Junior about Johnny Appleseed. We traced our hand and arm to create a tree trunk and branches and colored it with brown crayon. Next we used watercolor paint and a curly line to paint fall colored leaves. Last we stamped apples onto our tree. I used a pom pom attached to a clothes pin and put a small amount of red paint on a plate for them to stamp. The next class we cut our trees out, glued them to turquoise paper, than added and sky and details such as sunflowers or pumpkins under the tree. This project included tracing, printmaking (stamping), painting and line.
Aztec Gold
Students watched a Brain Pop Jr. about Mexico, which includes a part about the ancient Aztecs. We took a look at some of the turquoise and gold jewelry they made. For our project we used stoneware clay. I gave each student a small chunk of clay, they rolled it into a ball then smashed it into a fat pancake. We used stamps and marker lids to create texture on the clay pendants. Last they poked a pencil all the way through the middle to make a large hole. (Clay shrinks in the kiln so make the hole big!) Once they clay was fired, painted them with gold paint. I had some 5th grade helpers cut and tie the yarn in the pendants. We focused on texture for this project.
Mondrian Primaries
Students looked at Piet Mondrian's art and created their own version. I had pre-cut 1x18, 1x12, and 1x6 inch pieces of black paper for them to glue on to create squares. Students used primary crayons and texture plates to color their artwork. We focused on color theory and texture for this project.
Color Wheel Caterpillar
Students folded their paper in half the long way then did a tri-fold (with teacher help) to create 6 squares on a 12x18 white paper. We used tempera cakes to create the 6 colors of the basic color wheel. The trick is.... I only gave them the primary colors! We started by painting the yellow square, then painted yellow in the next square, washed our brush and got a little bit of red paint, and mixed it on the paper to create orange. I led the class color by color until we had all 6 on our paper. Next class we traced a circle in each box, cut them out, and glued them onto a green leaf in color wheel order. Last we added the details of the face, antenna, and legs to our caterpillars. Students were working on color theory when creating this artwork.
Indian Peacock
Students watched a short video about peacocks to learn a few facts about them. We found the middle of the picture plane when tracing a circle for the head. Students added diagonal lines for the neck, and straight lines radiating from the body and head to become the tail feathers. Students also added "eyes" to the feathers, then traced with sharpie, and colored the eyes with gold crayon. Last we used tempera cakes to paint the peacock. Students worked on space for this project.
