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!!

Major Catch Up!

First I want to apologize for my blogging absence. My husband and I have recently purchased a "fixer upper" house and it has consumed all of my out of school life. I have been up to my eye balls in paint, putty, and pretty much every tool ever imagined. I will post pictures of our progress soon!


My Waverly-Belmont kiddos did some awesome, amazing, wonderful art the first half of school. I just wanted to highlight a few of the projects they finished up before the winter break.


My Kinders created winter landscapes, the final products were incredible. Let's hope they bring us some snow this year! We read a book with lots of beautiful snowy landscapes. And then each student was able to identify the horizon line, the foreground, and the background. Check out these beauties.

Now first grade created some outer space art! We talked about spheres and how to color to make the planets look like they had dimension. We used Crayola construction paper crayons on black paper. Every kid needs some construction paper in their life. They are the bomb.com! They make brilliant color on construction paper. Once they finished their outer space drawing we cut up some old painted paper and drew astronauts on them. The artists outlined with sharpie and then cut and glue scrap paper to add details to their 'nauts. While they were creating their 'nauts I was calling them up to spray paint their background with a little white tempera and water. They loved this! Even though they only got to squirt three times. You would think it was the best day of their life! Finished projects were AMAZING!

Second graders did some fabulous weavings! Weaving is one of my fave things to teach, so I feel like the kids enjoy it because I love it so much. We started out each class creating a strip and then each student got to weave their paper strip(weft) in a huge piece of construction paper(warp). Once everyone go the jist they created their own paper weavings out of construction paper and painted paper strips. Students then created a collage of a house out of their weaving and scrap paper. I love these!

Third graders also created some amazing weavings. We just used those good ole chinet plates. They work just like a canvas. We looked at the art of Kandinsky and they they painted some concentric circles with Crayola tempera paint. Once those dried they added designs with black paint. We then learned about weaving. They warped their loom(plate) and then wove some beautiful yarn to create these lovelies.

Fourth graders had an awesome December. They have been working so hard and creating some beautiful artwork. I want to show you two projects they have been working on. We read the book "Snowmen at Night" by Caralyn Buehner. They then created their own snowman at night. We talked about drawing spheres to make it look like they were three dimensional. They used chalk on this project so they practiced blending. The catch was the snowman had to be doing an action. These turned out so fabulous.

Fourth graders also learned about the Ndebele people. They learned about their culture and specifically their artwork. We read the book "My painted house, my friendly chicken, and me" by Maya Angelou. They created an artwork in the Ndebele style using primary and secondary colors and black lines and shapes. I love these abstract pieces!

Talk Soon!

Sarah

Kindergarten Art

I love Kindergarten art!!! I love how much growth I see as an art teacher. I love how different each students art turns out. I love how excited they are about every project. I love how proud they are of their masterpieces when they are finished. And Kindergarten kiddos are hilarious always.

I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite Kindergarten projects from this year so far. We started out the year talking about shapes and color. My kindergarten artists created a ROY G. BV caterpillar out of shapes. This project was great because they got to practice shapes, colors, drawing, painting, cutting, and gluing all in one project. And I loved the finish product.

Artists used cardboard to create texture in their grass.

Two of the awesome finished products!

My kindergarten artists created self-portraits using shapes for their next project.. We read the book "the Colors of Us " by Karen Katz. This book celebrates different skin tones and diversity and I love it! My kiddos got to practice their shapes again! Learning to cut and hold scissors correctly is so important. So I love projects that give my kids the opportunity to practice cutting. Once they had all their shapes cut for their project they started assembling their self portrait collage. And I must say these turned out Ah-Mazing!

My sticky tables were so worth it! These kiddos collaged some masterpieces!

Hallway display!

My favorite time of year is fall! I love pumpkins, pumpkin coffee, my birthday, my anniversary, my husbands birthday, leaves changing colors, if it happens in the fall I love it! So of course I had to throw in a few awesome fall projects. These Kindergarten artists did phenomenal on this art project. We read the book "How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grown" by Wendell Minor. We talked about landscapes and how a landscape is a picture, drawing, or painting of outside. The kiddos picked out the landscapes in the book (which most of the illustrations are landscapes!). Afterwards we talked about horizon lines, foreground, and background and we identified these parts in some of these pictures. And they did awesome. Then it was time to get to work so we use oil pastels to draw a horizon line and then colored in the sky with the oil pastels. Then we set to work on the grass. We previously had made mad green painted paper using the colors blue and yellow. we cut triangles these papers into triangles and glued  them to the bottom half of our landscape. Finally time to draw a pumpkin!! I demonstrated how to draw the pumpkin on the clear touch. The artists used a black oil pastel to trace their lines and we painted them with yellow and red paint and voila....the red and yellow paint made ORANGE!!

I love my job! I get to make messes for a living and hang out with the funniest people.

 Talk Soon!

Sarah