Clay, clay, clay

So I am sitting in the ER with my Dommie (that would be my grandmother/best friend) at 4:48 am on a Friday and figured I could catch up on some of the fun stuff we have been doing in the art room while she is sleeping! The past few weeks have been the great clay extravaganza. Kindergarten and 1st grade are finishing up and taking home their clay projects. 2nd graders are waiting for their glazed pieces to go into the kiln and 3rd graders will be starting their clay masks next week. Clay is always so fun in the art room, but I must admit when I first started teaching, well the thought of clay gave me anxiety. I had a phenomenal art teacher I student taught under and she put my clay nerves at ease. Our school district has also given some great clay professional developments. And now I love teaching clay and the kids love it! So on with the projects.

We have been learning about texture in kindergarten. You know how something feels. So we made some extraordinary texture necklaces with the bottom of our shoes. There is nothing like watching a kindergartener create with clay for the first time. 

First graders created pinch pots and then made beaks, eyeballs, and wings and turned these into some birds! And they may be the best thing I have ever seen! The crazy legs are a nice touch. 

Third Grade Cityscapes

I am absolutely in love with these third grade projects. They are so impressive. Students glues various size construction paper squares to white paper. And then created buildings from the squares. They added details to their city and then traced their art with a black sharpie. They will move on to to paint the picture with crayola water colors after they finish tracing. Third grade rocks! We talked about perspective, horizon line, and shape.

Loving all the roads in this one!

The watercolors show up so vibrantly! Crayola watercolors are A+!

Rainbow Fish and Jim Fine Hearts

The kiddos and I have been super busy creating for the first annual art show! Here are a few projects kindergarten worked on last nine weeks.

Kinders created some fun Jim Dine pop art inspired pieces. They used jumbo crayola watercolors (these are amazing) to paint four sections on their paper and then they used a bottle cap, q tip, and black tempera paint to print some fun on the rectangles. We had a quick discussion about qtips being an art tool in the art room and don't need to enter your ears, nose, or mouth! 😉Then they created their hearts. I teach them to make hearts by having them draw a lower case m and then add a big V to the bottom. Then they sprayed the hearts with some watered down black tempera. They did a really great job. Then they cut and glue and voila!

Here is another fun project kinder has been working on inspired by Eric Carle's book "The Rainbow Fish." A little mixed media, wax resist piece, with some glitter on top. They drew the Rainbow fish with pencil, traced it with permanent sharpie, colored with Crayola crayons, added some bubbles with white crayons. Then they painted over the whole picture with those awesome jumbo Crayola watercolor paints. After the art was dried they added some seaweed at the bottom and a little glittery rainbow fin!!