Flamingos

4/5 learned about warm and cool colors and created abstract flamingos using those colors.  They used crayon in the opposite colors they chose to use on the inside of the flamingo so if their flamingo was warm on the inside the crayons were cool colors. then we finished with splatter(blow) painting around the flamingo in the colors of the bird.   We also looked at and talked about the work of Romare Beardon to learn a bit about collage art... it also worked out during Black History month so we made a few connections all around.

We used tissue paper and newspaper on the collage portion and connected it to the paper with either modge podge or a 50/50 glue water solution- both worked great.  Very nice results with this one to spring up our Florida school halls!

PeacockS!!!!

My k1 kiddos created peacocks for this years fundraiser project.  The started by tracing a peacock body, adding a beak out of paper then drawing lines around it.  They then used the two primary colors and the secondary color it makes to add dots around the lines... they used their fingers to make these spots.  Once that was dry we added in little feather lines off of the main line in those same 3 colors to create the full feather.  Very fun and colorful results!

Big FAT Hen

As seen in a few varieties done by different art teachers I too have created my own version of the popular lesson on Keith Backer's "Big Fat Hen".  My 4th and 5th graders first looked through the book noting the style of his illustrations and then discussed what an illustrator does.  After this each students received a piece of colored paper and picked a copy of one of the hens from the book to attempt to draw, no directions given on how to draw it other than hinting to starting with the head and breaking it down into simple shapes then adding details.  Then they finished by using all construction paper crayons to make the colors of the hens pop, noting that Backer did not draw boring white, brown and black hens but bright colorful ones.   They also were told to add one detail to the bottom of the hen, a bug, chick, egg or whatever they felt fit.  Some chose to add color to the background, others didn't, over all a very fun drawing lesson that caused them to work independently and push themselves to truly see rather than just look at a picture.

Peacocks!

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K1 made these fun pattern Peacocks!  They started by tracing a body template of a peacock then cutting it out and gluing it to their paper.  They then added the feathers looking at the patterns in real feathers.  They started by adding the circles with 3 colors then a BUNCH of little feather lines to show the texture in the feathers. Some came out better than others but for K-1 they aren't to bad.

One Day Owls

K-1 One Day Owls

As a quick filler project my k-1 students learned how to draw this fun lil owl.  We went step by step drawing together just with crayon (to avoid eraser worries) and then the students used watercolors to paint them in.

This owl was with one of my last classes when we  decided to call them Opposite Owls, learning about color opposites, this was a fun way to get a little color theory into the lesson, in the future i will probably do them all this way, just to avoid so many plain brown owls.

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