Still Life

4/5 Created a still life Glue. Pastel drawing using direct observation.  They looked at the still life of bottles and apples and drew what they saw.  They first started by watching me draw it, talking about how to draw a bottle and apple correctly.  Next they practiced small sketches 4 times on paper then one time large on the back of the paper.

They then drew their final one on black paper finishing by outlining over the pencil lines with glue.   They next week they chose the colors they wanted to use and filled in the bottles, apples and table with chalk pastels and rubbed them all over with a piece of a paper towel.   In the end we finished by spraying they paper with hair spray to fix the chalk to the paper.   They were a fun project for the kids to learn about direct observation with as well as still life's and Paul Cezanne.

Samples of what i put on the board and they steps the 4/5 students took to complete their projects, then student samples:

Luck of the Irish!

For a quick one day project I decided to pull from a project my cop. teacher did last year on Matisse.  We traced Shamrocks and cut them out the created a collage utilizing EVERY piece of paper.... we could have done this for 2- 40 min classes but i wanted to the kids to have it done and with them for St. Patrick's day and before Spring Break.  Fun project to let them think outside the box, work independently and also worked well for k-5 allowing each to be as detailed as their age allowed.  Very fun!

YEAH FOR CLAY!!

This year for clay projects we created different creatures out of pinch pot forms.   The 2nd and 3rd graders created a Clay Turtle while the 4th and 5th grade kiddos made up their own Clay Dragon.  Both of these projects we painted with Tempera Cakes and then coated in Mod Podge to give them a smooth shiny finish.  The paint simply allowed for more details to be put into the projects.

CLAY DRAGONS 4/5

CLAY TURTLES 2/3

For the lil ones we did a simple clay slab Owl by rolling folding and stamping the clay.  For these we used Glazes to finish them off with a shine.

CLAY OWLS K/1

Paul Klee Meets MJ

For this 2/3rd grade Project we were inspired by the work of Artist Paul Klee, and in a way the music of Michael Jackson.

The students first learned all about Artist Paul Klee, Abstract art and Symbolism.  Then the listened to the first 30 seconds of Smooth Criminal by MJ.  The students were asked to draw what they heard.  The music had a lot of hard and soft beats allowing them to create different lines and symbols to express what they heard.  Then they bolded the lines with black paint.   To finished and perfect their coloring skills they were to use markers to fill in all of the white space around the painting using different blocks of color and only coloring going in ONE direction a task difficult for most 2nd and 3rd graders to grasp.

Below are examples of they samples of symbols i had on  the board, students in progress work, and finished student work... over all a fun colorful project the students seemed to really enjoy!