Recycled Penguins

I needed an easy one day lesson for my first graders, it's the week before spring break:) They watched a short video all about penguins. It was the perfect length and had built in quizzes to ask them questions about the facts they learned about penguins. They used a recycled water bottle, cotton stuffing, and scrap paper to make the penguins. A last minute addition was to make all the penguins daddy penguins taking care of their eggs (pom pon ball). This was an easy one day project and the kids LOVED it!

Chinese New Year Snakes

Students learned all about the Chinese New Year and zodiac calendar  through a power point presentation.  They learned about the legend of the 12 animals who visited Buddha when he was dying. Buddha then named a year after each of these animals. This year it is the year of the snake. Students traced a snake stencil onto heavy poster board and cut it out. They learned how to tie two pieces of string together into a knot before we started the yarn wrapping. I hot glued the first string they started wrapping with, but they were responsible for tying together the string when they wanted to switch colors. When they were all done, I hot glued the end of the string and added eyes and the tongue they cut from felt.

Clay Cats

Students created a unique clay cat ( or mouse, they ended looking like mice:) by first making a pinch pot for the body. They then sculpted the other body parts from recycled clay and attached using the clay attaching techniques of scoring, slipping, and smoothing. Lastly, they used glaze to paint their sculptures. They did a super job working three dimensionally.

Clay Slab Boxes

5^th graders reviewed the clay attaching techniques scoring, slipping, and smoothing by watching a short video. They also learned how to roll slabs of clay by also watching a video and seeing me demonstrate with our clay tools. A slab of clay is a thick rolled out piece of clay that is the same thickness all the way through. For the clay project students made a clay slab box. First they drew out the design of their slab box on paper to create a stencil to trace. Students then rolled two slabs that were the lid and bottom piece to their box. Next they had to roll more slabs to create the walls to their box and attach them to the bottom slab. Students had to be careful that their wall slabs were all the same height and proper thickness. Once their box was built, they decorated by either attaching more clay pieces or using a drawing tool to etch designs on the box. Lastly, they glazed their box. This was a long process and they did awesome! I told them they are all definitely ready for middle school clay projects nowJ

Keith Haring Prints

4^th and 5^th graders learned about the artist Keith Haring through a Power Point presentation. They learned that Haring started out as a subway graffiti artist. We discussed the positives and negatives of graffiti art, and when graffiti is actually art. The students viewed lots of examples of Haring’s artwork and learned the common characteristics that he included in his artwork: thick black lines, simple shapes and figures, and lines that create movement. They also learned about his favorite subjects to include in his artwork: dancing figures, dogs, flying saucers, hearts, and radiating babies. For the project, students learned the technique of printmaking. First they did a practice drawing of one of Haring’s favorite things to draw. Next they transferred that drawing to a rubber linoleum stamp. They used special linoleum carving tools to carve out their design. They then made four prints, two were left black and white (like Haring’s early subway artworks), and the other two were colored in. They also added visual movement by adding colorful lines in the boarders of their paper. We discussed that print making is a very unique style of artmaking because no two prints are ever the same, even if using the same printing plate every time.

Chinese New Year Snakes!

Students learned all about the Chinese New Year and zodiac calendar  through a power point presentation.  They learned about the legend of the 12 animals who visited Buddha when he was dying. Buddha then named a year after each of these animals. This year it is the year of the snake. Students made paper sculpture snakes from construction paper and the heads were recycled paper towel tubes that they painted and added eyes and fangs

Circle Weavings

I LOVE doing weaving projects. It is one of the few rare times where it is silent in the art room. The kids really get into it and love it. To introduce the project we went over the vocabulary of loom, weaving, warp, and weft. I also showed them a quick powerpoint on the history of weaving, just to show them all the different types of looms that weavers use. Day one we "dressed" the loom by attaching the warp strings. The following 2 (or 3) classes the kids just wove, and when they got close to finishing up, I had them tie off their weft string and color in the rest of the craft circle with markers using colors that they had in their weaving.

*Mr. E has a great tutorial on circle weavings that I followed and step by step directions on how to attach warp strings. I did a demonstration of how to attach warp strings using the Elmo and also doing it in small groups. I had the step by step directions on the overhead as well. Getting the loom all ready was definitely the most challenging part of the project, but they did great.

http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/search/label/Weaving   (link to step by step directions)   

Jellyfish Sculptures

First graders continued their study of jellyfish. They used construction paper to paper mache a styrofoam bowl. Once dried, they covered the body with glitter gloss and glued on tissue paper and ribbons for legs. I hotglued googley eyes and pom pons for the eyes.