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.

Butterflies

2nd graders at one of my schools were actually growing butterflies in their classrooms for their science classes. So what a great tie in to do butterflies in art. We discussed symmetry and what it is in art and nature. Students cut out their butterfly shapes by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting on the fold to get the same shape for both wings. When we applied paint, we only did to one side, then we folded the butterfly back together and smooshed the paint around. When they opened up their wings they had a beautifully colored butterfly that was symmetrical in color and shape.

For the background we used tissue paper that bleeds and water. I just learned about this technique this year and love it. Just put tissue paper on your white paper and add water. Let the tissue paper dry, and then it peals right off. I was able to keep reusing the same tissue paper for all my classes.

Day Of the Dead Skeletons

I did this lesson in the fall. In my district we have a large population of hispanic students and they always get excited when we do lessons that include a tradition from their culture. I even had a student who had participated in a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico a couple of years ago. It was awesome to hear her first hand account of what she saw and did to celebrate this holiday. We discussed the tradition of the holiday and what the skeletons and marigold flowers represent. There are some good videos on You Tube that show people celebrating this holiday in the traditional manner in Mexico, as well as locally here in America.

Around Halloween time you can get cheap plastic skeletons at the Dollar Store. I loaded up this year on mini skeletons so each of my art tables could have two or three to look at. I had also printed out a few pictures of Day of the Dead skeleton drawings from the internet for students to reference as well.

Chuck Close Self Portraits

5th graders learned about the artist Chuck Close through the DVD Up Close with Chuck Close. I had to fast forward through some parts, but it's a great video that shows how he works in his studio and how he had to overcome his disability to continue painting. I photographed each student and printed out a 4x6 photocopy of their portrait. Cut 18x24 paper down to 16x24 to get the same ratio size of the photograph. I had pre-cut strips of tagboard to use for when the students had to grid their photographs and drawing paper. 1 inch strips for the photo, and 3 in for the drawing paper. This is a great lesson to help improve drawing skills. They need to really look at each box individually and draw only what they see. I kept telling them that once they give in to this process of drawing, they will have great results. And we did!

Klimt Tree of Life

2nd graders learned about the artist Gustav Klimt. We read the story Klimt's Cat and looked at examples of his artworks. We talked about common things that we saw in Klimt's artwork: the use of the color gold, shapes, and patterns. We painted the background gold first. Then 2nd graders painted trees free form (no drawing first). Lastly, we added oil pastel and sequence details to the trees.

Paper Mosaics

Third graders learned about how to make Mosaics. We used only the scrap box for this project, which is great for the end of the year. I had the students do a pencil sketch of their landscape design first, and then add the little paper pieces. It was a great review of how to glue properly too.

Salvador Dali Elephants