First new blog of the new school year hooray!  This year has gotten off to a brilliant start and I am so excited about my talented students and the amazing art that they have already created and about seeing what they will make in the future!!!

To start off the new school year very strong, Kindergarten students created these awesomely adorable multimedia snails.  

We began by learning about lines.  There are many different sorts of lines, straight lines, curvy lines, curly lines, and spiral lines.  After practicing drawing spiral lines many times, students created a snail shell by using oil pastels to draw a very large spiral to fill their paper.  Next, they took on the task of filling the spiral with their name repeating.  This was a great exercise for Kinders to practice writing their name and also created an interesting pattern throughout the shell.  
After adding a head and tail with oil pastel as well, students used watercolor paints to make a colorful, fun snail.  They were very excited as they watched the watercolor and oil pastel resist and the drawings showed through the paint.
Once the snails were done, students carefully cut around the snail and glued it onto a blue (or black) piece of paper and drew some clouds.  Before adding the 'dirt' and 'grass,' we discussed texture.  Texture is what something feels like or what it looks like it feels like.  Kinders recognized that puppies may feel "soft, "fuzzy," and "squishy" whereas a tree bark may feel "rough," "hard," and "bumpy."  They glued down cut pieces of paper to create a dirty and grassy texture.
The favorite part of the project was probably adding the finishing touch of the silly goggley eyes.  What I have learned is that googley eyes make a kindergarten student a very, very happy student.

I was super excited about starting out the school year with this project with the 5th grade students.  I really love radial symmetry and I enjoy teaching it so was quite pleased when the 5th grade students seemed just as into it as I was.

To do this project, you begin with large square pieces of paper.  Fold in half, corner to corner.  Fold in half again, corner to corner, then one more time.  After you've folded it three times, you have a triangle.  On that triangle, you write your name in large bubble letters to fill the entire space.  Then you open the square back up partially and using a light table or sunlight on a window, trace the name drawing.  You continue to do this over and over until all of one side is filled with your name flipped and mirrored.  This creates a beautiful radial symmetry name mandala.

This project was mostly for an introduction to my art class and to learn their names, but we took a bit of time to discuss radial symmetry and how to create bold bubble letters.

After the names are all written with a Sharpie, the students painted in the 'background' with acrylic paint and then added color in the letters with colored pencils.  They were limited to four colors.

The results are amazing.  Each and every single name mandala turned out great.  It is really cool to put two different students with the same name next to each other.  There are two Isaac's, two Taylor's.  Even though they wrote the same name, they turned out totally different.

SUPER FUN PROJECT! 

The first grade students started their year out by learning about warm and cool colors.  We used words such as lava and sunshine to associate with warm colors and words such as iceberg and ocean to associate with cool colors.  

Students also discussed the importance of hands.  According to the first graders, hands are important because...
"They are used to eat yummy food"
"You can give people hugs with your hands"
"Hands are used for making art"
"You write letters and books with hands"
"You give people presents with your hands"
......and on and on



To begin this project, the students started with a piece of card stock and learned how to use watered-down glue to collage tissue paper.  

After collaging one half of the paper with warm colored tissue paper,  the students did the other half with cool colors.  Each took one class period.

After these had dried, the first graders traced their own hand, on each side of the collage and then cut them out.  It was a great practice for them to cut such intense, jagged lines from the tracing of fingers.  I found that the first class struggled with the cutting, so for the next class, I printed out a squiggly line drawing for them to practice on before cutting out their hand.  That seemed to help.

After the hands were cut, they used a thin black paint to write their names on the hands.

Once both classes had finished, I cut out large black circles of paper and mounted the hands in a radial design, reaching out into the world.

The artwork now proudly hangs in the office of the school Principal!

The third grade students started out the year by learning how to create decorative patterns by repeating shapes.  The students practiced making these patterns, which we called "doodle art" by drawing at least four of the same shape, such as four squares, then adding the same detail to each square to create an interesting repetitive pattern.

After practicing this technique and creating at least 6 unique patterns, the students drew a large bubble letter of the first letter of their first name.  We discussed positive and negative space and the students had to decide whether to fill the inside or outside of their letter with doodles and which area became positive and negative space.  Using sharpies, the third graders filled the space with these 'doodle art' patterns that they had created.

Once the area was filled with doodle art, the students selected four colors and used colored pencil to fill in the doodles.