Jungle Cats!

2/3 just finished painting BIG!!!! i found this lesson idea on smART class blog (http://elementaryartfun.blogspot.com/search/label/Big%20Cats) and had to try it... tweeked it around a little with the background and we only used tempera cakes for the background and tempera paint for the cats but overall the results are pretty cute and the kids had a BLAST making them!! took a while to paint the 18x24 paper though.

That time of year again...

Clay time! the time of year where the art room fills with dirt and dusk and i will prob. get a stellar cold from all the lovely mold growing on the clay... but this year we have fun stuff going on... details and photos to come...

k-1 Pinch Pots (some 1st are going to make slab birds)
2-3 Slab Birds with added tails
4-5 Pinch Pot animals

The ideas all came from my wonderful blogger friends ... i will add their links to their projects when i get my detailed posts up and going...

Wonderful start so far..... now lets just see if i make it through all the germs and dust...

So much going on... so little time....

So many fun things have been going on this semester and time has flown past and i haven't gotten a chance to update... attached are a few pictures of some of the projects we have completed and soon i will get posts up for how we did each.

 K1--

Brown Bear Brown Bear

Value Pumpkins

23--

Letter Clowns

 LeRoy Neiman Lions

45---

Keith Harring Motion

Fauvist Colored Rescue Dog Portraits

FAUVIST LIONS!

This idea came from this post ... http://marymaking.blogspot.com/2011/09/leroy-neiman-inspired-lions.html.. on Mary Making.

I changed it a little but kept the basic concept and history portion similar.  I used colored pencils for the face and then added tempera paint for the main--- fun project with pretty good results... some students rushed and made a MESS but most did a pretty good job.   We talked a lot about subjective color use and how simply laying colors over others will keep the one color clean and also blend to create a new color with what is under it.  Very fun but i would make a few changes to how we draw the face next time.

Giraffes Cant Dance

You've seen it before on countless blogs and i'm sorry i cant recall where i last saw it (may have been Deep Space Sparkle) but i had to try it my way.... we read the story drew a dancing giraffe on yellow paper added spots, painted a landscape, added stars and glued our giraffes to be dancing through the sky.  VERY FUN project with super cute, creative results!

Matisse Gold Fish

This idea came from the Blog BlueMoon Palette (project here: http://bluemoonpalette.blogspot.com/search/label/goldfish)  and i loved it!!! It can be done quickly as a final week project like i am doing or made more elaborate and last for a few weeks! Over all my students have done a great job doing this project mostly independently.  I have been working on drawing with them an soon hope that they no longer feel they need steps to draw or to follow along with me as i draw and can just see something and draw it, but that takes time so for this one i did a simple step by step on the board and told them to draw!  We also talked about foreshortening and negative space with this project and so far students from grades 1-4 have done a SUPER job!

Endangered Animals

My 2/3 graders LOVE to free draw so to work on improving their drawing skills i have introduced them to "How to Draw Sheets".  They are learning about Endangered animals in Science and so i put out my collection of Endangered Animal Drawing Sheets for them to use.
 Their task was simple:
day 1- Follow the steps to draw their animal BIG on the piece of colored paper that best represented its habitat.
day 2-  out line the animal and add in at least 3 objects that help show what the animals habitat is. (the drawing sheets have a small paragraph explaining where the animal lives and why it is endangered that they were to read to help them draw)
day 3- i played around with how i wanted them to fill in the color a bit so some classes used Chalk Pastels and filled in (came out kinda messy, maybe too detailed for this age group to do), some Painted them in with Tempera Cakes (the color didn't stand out too well on the colored paper background.) then most classes and the photos show the ones who colored in the animals with Construction paper crayons, good color they just really needed to slow down to make the crayon neat.

Over all a GREAT drawing project which forced the kids to thing BIG, just a few kinks to work out for the future on how i want to finish it.



One of the students did this during a free draw with these sheets and thus im inspiration for the project:
So fun and creative for a 2nd grader!!

 Samples from day 2 on...