3rd Grade Recycled Magazine Bowls

This is the second time I have done this project.  It is one that I have seen on other blogs around the internet and I really like it.  I get it started by cutting a bunch of 3/4" strips of chip board.  The kids wrap single pages of recycled magazine pages very tightly around the chip board.  I tried 1/2" strips last year, but it ended up being a little too difficult for some students.  After many strips are rolled, the pages are then connected end to end to make a large disk.  At the end of the project, we pushed out the bottom of the disk to make a bowl and painted over it with Mod Podge.  This is a great way to talk about recycling in the art room and use up some old donated magazines!  

3rd Grade Ceramic Animals and Habitat

Wow.  It has been a while since I have updated the blog.  As many of you who have your art shows in the spring know, it is a busy time of the year.  I'm going to post a massive barrage of projects that have been neglected in the past month.  


The 3rd graders worked on creating clay animals.  They learn about animal adaptations in their classroom curriculum, so it is a great starting point for a project.  We study many kinds of adaptations in animals and look more specifically at camouflage.  Each student studies one animal and creates that animal out of clay.  While the clay is drying and being fired, we spend two classes making habitats for the clay animals.  This is a great time to use up some construction paper scraps and cardboard boxes.  

2nd Grade Clay Dinosaurs

In recent years, 2nd graders have made clay insects.  As other art teachers know, it is nice to change up projects relatively often to keep things interesting.  This year, 2nd grade students made clay dinosaurs instead!  From a ceramic standpoint, this project focuses on scoring and attaching pieces of clay.  This project took four classes total.  On the first day, I showed a Keynote presentation with pictures of dinosaurs and even a short video.  Each student then chose one dinosaur from a big collection of books and drew that dinosaur.  On day two, I demonstrated how to make the dinosaurs out of clay.  Students took two 45 minute classes to create their clay dinosaurs.  On the fourth and final day, each student painted their dinosaur with tempera paints.  Those who finished early made landscape elements out of scrap construction paper for our display.  I really love how these turned out!

4th Grade Clay Castles

4th graders just finished one of the favorite projects in all of elementary art at Thomas.  Clay castles have become legendary in the hallways.  Each student starts by studying castles from all over the world before designing their own.  Students use slab building techniques in order to create their clay castles.  The variety of shapes and details always amaze me.  While they are waiting on the castles to dry and be fired, students create a coat of arms that is placed behind their castles.  Finally, the castles are glazed and set on display shelves to be marveled at by the entire school.  Huzzah!  

2nd Grade Bugs in Their Habitat

2nd graders learned about insects and arachnids for this project.  Each student chose one particular bug to study and draw in order to create these multi-media pieces  Students first drew a very detailed drawing of their bug on heavy stock.  The bugs were colored with colored pencil.  Next, the habitat was drawn, thinking about scale, and painted with tempera paint.  Finally, the bugs were attached using 3D O's.  This makes them look like they are popping right out at you!

1st Grade Owls

1st grade students recently finished a project based on the book "Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen.  I like to use literature as a step into first and some second grade projects.  I find it is an interesting way to get the kids engaged with a new project.  It is easy to create a project from just about any book.  


For this particular project, after reading the book to my students, each child drew an owl.  They went over their pencil lines with sharpie and then used watercolor to add color.  The owls were cut out and glued on to black construction paper along with a couple of branches and a moon.  It is a simple and very successful project.  My favorite part is seeing how each owl has its own unique personality.

5th Grade Claymation Update

The 5th grade students are doing claymation again!  Claymation is by far the biggest, longest, and most involved project that I do during the entire year. (Even bigger than the bottle cap project!)  It takes at lest two to three months to complete.  At this point, each class has broken up into different groups to complete various tasks.  Students can choose to be character designers, set designers, or writers/storyboard artists. 

This year, the 5th graders are animating the art room rules.  Mrs. Burton, our phys-ed teacher,  put together a playground rules video that we show to every single student on the first day of school each year.  It is informative and hilarious, so I thought doing something similar for the art room would be awesome.  I've included a few pictures of work in process.  Many of the sets are miniatures of the art room and you will see an eraser and a sponge among the characters.  The students have just begun filming, so the final product will be finished in a little over a month.  I'll definitely post the finished video on here when it is finished.

1st Grade Penguins

Sorry for the complete and utter lack of updates recently.  The countdown to my art show has started and I've decided to do multiple new projects on a big deadline before the May 12th show.  I'm pretty sure everything will be done in time, but there are a lot of high-intensity projects going on.  It will be fantastic to take a big breath after the art show and realize there are only a couple more weeks of school left!  

This project is another that Drew Jones, another art teacher in my district and all-around good guy, from Riverside Elementary Art shared with me.  I took some time to talk about penguins with my 1st graders and showed them how to do a basic drawing of a penguin.  I encouraged everyone to use their own imagination and make their penguins as cool as possible.  The penguins were eventually cut out and glued on to a wet on wet watercolor background that the kids had done early in the project.  The "ice" is wax paper that has been crumpled and carefully uncrumpled and the mountains are just standard drawing paper cut by the kids. 

3rd Grade Machine Brains

This is now the third time that I've done this project and it continues to be one of my favorites.  For this third grade project, I start out by showing the students the work of the cartoonist Rube Goldberg.  We discuss his hilariously complicated machines.  Next, we look at the six kinds of simple machines and check out examples of each.  Finally, I have been able to find all kinds of fantastic videos of chain reaction "machines" that people have built.  One that is particularly good is a music video for the song "This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go.  Definitely check it out if you have a chance.


The students must then design a machine that fits inside their head that will do something that their head actually does.  Kids have chosen everything from coming up with an idea or blinking to machines that make boogers.  I require that their machines have at least eight steps and include four of the six simple machines.  It takes a couple of weeks for the kids to refine their sketches, but the end products end up looking really cool.  I have the kids use construction paper scraps to make the machine parts.  After the artwork is finished, I have each student write about how their machine works on their artist statement.  


In the images above, I included full student examples as well as an excellent example of the artist statement.  That particular statement goes along with the first artwork example.  I also included a few close-ups of specific machine parts that I thought were extra cool.  Enjoy!

4th Grade Warhol Prints

These are examples from a 4th grade printmaking project.  4th grade students learned about Andy Warhol and other important artists in the Pop Art movement.  Students learned that Pop Artists usually take ordinary objects and turn them into art.  Each student chose something from their everyday life and pressed their image into foam printmaking sheets.  They then learned about using ink and brayers to create a total of four prints.