Large Painted Dogs

5^th graders learned about the artist Pablo Picasso. They learned about Cubism and how in Picasso’s Cubist portraits he focused on the eyes and noses. 5^th graders each received a photograph of a dog and first painted the eyes and nose on index cards. They then glued them to a large sheet of paper and painted the rest of the dog around the eyes and nose. They are wonderful and beautiful‼

Picasso Dogs

4^th graders learned about the artist Pablo Picasso by looking at his artwork and a Power Point presentation. Picasso invented a style of art called Cubism. Cubism is breaking up objects using different shapes and forms.  4^th graders used Cubism in their drawings of dogs. This was done with oil pastels.

Laurel Burch Dogs

2nd graders learned about the American, self- taught artist Laurel Burch by looking at her website and watching a short interview with her. She has a rare bone disease that often keeps her bed ridden for months at a time. She says she’d paint with her toes if she had to though! She loves to use bright colors and patterns. Most of all she loves to paint animals.



Wag a Tail

Students read Wag A Tail by Lois Ehlert. We used our art eyes to find the various shapes that Lois used to create her dogs. The students also had fun being the pointer and finding all the dogs in the illustrations. We created our own dogs with paper. I did the instruction step by step as an entire group. The first graders did awesome. Their favorite part was naming their dog1!

Dog Gone Unit

At the end of September we are having an all school assembly with a very special guest, Frankie the Daschund. Frankie is special because his hind legs are paralyzed so he has a special doggie wheel chair for his hind legs. Frankie and his owner teach diversity and how to over come challenges life hands you. So I thought it would be a warm welcome to Frankie if we had all sorts of Art dogs to greet him when he got to our school. I found a different dog project for each grade level to create!

First days of school Project

I think the first week of art is always the toughest, because you have to review all the classroom rules and procedures. It's so much talking and I know the students would rather be working on projects. So this year I shortened my introduction to the art room to bare bones so we could get to a project right away. I figured I could address specific procedures as they come up through out the year. So I got this idea from SmART Class blog, THANK YOU!! It turned out so great and I've gotten so many compliments on it from other staff members. And of course the students love hunting for their portrait. There was about 20 portraits that I didn't add to the big collage, but I will be hanging those in my art room for a mini college.

My mini collage in my art room of students who didn't finish in time for the bigger display.

Graffiti Names

Great end of the year project. NO MESS! These 5th graders were still finishing them up, but did an awesome job.

3rd Grade Weavings

Flower Meadows

This was an easy end of the year painting project for first graders. It has taken spring so long to come to Wisconsin, that we though we'd move it along in art class by painting spring flowers. We read the story REALLY SPRING. (a great older story about a town that is so sick of winter that they start painting spring things all over the town). We reviewed vertical and diagonal lines and used small brushes to paint the flower petals.

Mini Monets

This was an easy one day painting project that I did with 5th grade when I returned from maternity leave. We learned about Monet through a Power Point presentation that I had made. We discussed the painting style of Impressionism. I find that students get a kick out of painting like an Impressionism because it is such a loose style of painting. Each student needed to re-create the Lily Pond paintings. I showed them how to paint wet on wet with tempera paint and to do the color mixing right on the paper. Some worked really quick, so I had them do a second one and we turned those into a Lily Pond collage.