1st Grade Color Mixing with Kandinsky

First grade has been learning all about painting this year.  We have been building on each lesson and we have just finished a very exciting project.  First graders discussed a famous painting by Vassily Kandinsky.   We learned about secondary colors and how they are made by mixing primary colors.  Each first grader was able to mix colors in order to paint their projects.  It was a lot of fun for everyone!

4th Grade Clay Castles

4th grade just finished their ceramic project for the year.  It has become a tradition to build castles in 4th grade.  After learning about the Middle Ages and seeing castles from all over the world, each student designs their own castle.  Students use a slab building technique to construct their castles.  After a bisque firing, castles are glazed and glaze fired.  Each students also designed a coat of arms to be displayed with their castles.  These turned out fantastic this year!

1st Grade Dancing Giraffes

This first grade project is based a fantastic book entitled Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae.  The book teaches kids that everyone has their own way of doing things, and that we should all embrace each other's differences.  The main character of the book is a Giraffe who eventually becomes the best dancer in the jungle.  First graders each created a dancing giraffe and were able to experiment with some really cool techniques for making the moon in the background glow and making the grass look very real!  They had a great time with this project!

Kids can constantly amaze!

 Toward the end of the day today, I had a first grade class quietly working on some free drawing after they had finished another project.  I'm used to seeing great drawings from the Thomas students, but I saw one today that was especially impressive.  Trisha, a first grade student was working from a "How to draw Lion King" book.  Some younger kids want to trace or will diligently work on each small step from the book.  Trisha wouldn't ever think about tracing and completely skipped the steps.  She loves to draw an is obviously very good at it.  It is these types of things that really make my day as an art teacher.  

3rd Grade Recycled Magazine Bowls

Third grade just finished one of the coolest projects of the entire year.  Continuing our effort to be green this year, we made bowls out of magazine pages!  Each student rolled page after page around a chip board strip.  The individual pages were taped together and rolled into one giant spiral.  The bottom was then pushed down and the entire bowl was given a coat of clear medium to give it strength.  We had great discussions of how artists can use recycled materials.  It must have been a great project because other grade levels are begging me to let them do this project, too! 

4th Grade Playing Card Portraits

4th grade recently finished a self portrait project.  After studying playing cards, each student created a playing card with their own face on it.  Emphasis was placed on the use of pattern throughout the card as well as including items that represent the artist making the card (instead of swords, etc. that are usually on face cards).  The cards look great!

Art Can Be Green

I know that quite a few of the people who check out this blog are art teachers.  This is a post for you.  I have been working this year to increase environmental awareness of students in my classroom.  I've been doing this through various art lessons, quite a bit of discussion, and signs and reminders in my room.  

As part of my master's thesis, I created a web site that is all about being green in the art room.  It has some pretty useful information to check out.  If you go there, please feel free to join the green art discussion group.  I'd be happy to hear any feedback about the site.  I'm always looking to add additional information.  Here is the link ---> The Green Art Room