Circle Weavings

One of my favorite end of the year projects! Students LOVE to weave! I love fiber arts, it's a win win art project.

Paper Mache Snowmen

Wayne Thiebaud Cakes

Water Color Pumpkins

Circle Weavings

One of my favorite end of the year projects because the kids LOVE it, and it isn't messy with an easy clean up.

Grant Wood Clay Chickens

Snowflake Bentley

Students learned about the “Snowflake Man” Wilson Bentley. A self educated farmer, Bentley attracted world attention with his groundbreaking work in the area of photography, most notably his extensive work with snow crystals (commonly known as snowflakes). By adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, and years of trial and error, he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal in 1885.

For this lesson we discussed radial symmetry; symmetry of an object around a center axis or point. Each student drew unique snowflakes. Each line became one point of the snowflake. Students then decorated their snowflakes with shapes and lines. The only rule was that it had to show radial symmetry.

Students then outlined their snowflakes in Sharpie, and used a wet on wet watercolor painting technique to paint the background.  

Chinese Dragons

Third graders learned about Chinese dragons through a Power Point presentation in art class. They learned that today, we know that magical dragons exist only in imagination and myth.  They are mythical creatures. But in ancient China, the people firmly believed that dragons were real and powerful. The dragon was the sign of the emperors. Legend says that there were 5 different type of Chinese dragons: Wood, Fire, Earth, Water, and Metal.

Third graders were working on their effort and craftsmanship for this art project. Students started out by using yarn to make the dragon’s body. Then, they used colored pencils to add a head and tail, and patterns around the string for the body. They reviewed that a pattern must repeat itself in order for it to be a pattern.

Students took their time in creating a simple, yet neat and detailed Chinese Dragon.

Blue Dog

Third graders learned about the American artist George Rodrigue.  Rodrigue is from Louisiana. Rodrigue shot to fame for painting “BLUE DOG”. Blue Dog was inspired from a childhood tale of a werewolf dog Rordrigue heard as a child and from his family dog, Tiffany. Blue Dog has popped up in all sorts of modern pop culture. Where have you seen Blue Dog?

( I have a lot of Hispanic students at my school and I love how they always sneak the love of their culture into art projects. The Mexican flag always seems to find its way into art projects. And I love the Blue Dog painted all orange from eating Takis. If you've eaten Takis, (a Mexican type of chip like Cheetohs), they make a huge orange mess. I love how that students covered his Blue Dog in orange paint)

Tree Silhouettes

Third graders learned that a silhouette is the image of an object or scene represented as a solid shape, single color, and it's edges matching the outline of the subject.

In class we did a Smartboard activity where the third graders had to guess the silhouette of a famous person- can you name all the silhouettes?

Students used chalk pastel to create the sky and moon background. Next they learned a different approach to painting a fall tree by using a piece of cardboard for their paintbrush. Students used the cardboard to paint in the trunk and thick branches of the tree by using a scraping motion, and then skinny branches by using a stamping technique with the cardboard. Students used only one color to create a silhouette- like effect. They did a great job!