Adaptive Names

Georgia O' Keeffe Pastel Flowers

Have students draw out flower first. I always tell them to have the petal touching all four sides of the paper. Outline with glue (any glue will work, I just use the school glue). Use pastels to blend in. I have them start with one color, the main color of their flower. Then choose another color for the tips of your petals. It's a messy technique, but the students do a great job of blending and end up with beautiful flowers.

Clay Wizards

5th grade did these wizards at the beginning of the school year. It was the most extensive clay project I've done, lasting a little over three weeks. They turned out great and were totally worth it!

Chihuly Ikebanas and Macchias

I teach at multiple schools. At my main school I'm working on a Chihuly Tower with my fifth graders. [I got the idea from other art blogs, Mr E's and my friend Mrs. Barolazzi (Artolazzi)}] But I teach one fifth grade section at my traveling school, so I combined two Chihuly projects. I combined the Ikebana and macchia projects for my fifth graders. The macchias are made out of coffee filters, markers, and liquid starch attached with pipe cleaners. The Ikebanas are soda bottles with paper mached tissue paper. I had them add tempera paint dots since Macchia means spotted in Italian. And lastly, we added glitter gloss to make it look shiny like glass.

Aboriginal Turtles

2nd graders learned Aboriginal Art through a Power Point I created. We looked at lots of paintings, mostly of animals. I had students trace a circle on their paper with white oil pastel, then add 4-5 wavy lines. First they filled in their turtles with dots using Q tips. They had to create a pattern with the paint colors given. When the turtle was filled in, they moved onto the water, I limited the water color choices to blue, purple, and white.

Tinted Bunnies

For spring/ Easter I had first graders create tinted bunnies. We discussed how to create a tint before we did any artmaking. First I had the students draw a bunnie using a piece of chalk on white paper. (I like to have students draw with chalk in younger grades, because then they draw big, and don't spend all their time erasing and re-drawing) Then they got a color choice of blue, green, or yellow to mix their tint. They LOVED the mixing their own tint, a lot of oohs and aaahs could be heard. I had them sponge paint a background, add sharpie details, cut grass, and then glue everything. I hot glued the pom pon nose on for them.

My First Post!

So I have really been slacking this past school year. I've had my art education blog created for this whole school and haven't done anything with it....UNTIL NOW! I had a good excuse though, on January 1, 2011 at 6:33 am I was blessed with the birth of a beautiful baby girl. Cecilia has been occupying most of my time. But since the school year is winding down, I wanted to post a few pictures of the projects I've been working on with my classes since I came back from maternity leave in April. So here it goes, my first post and my first project posts!