Clay Projects 3rd and 5th grade

3rd grade owls turned out great.  This lesson plan is from MRS. PICASSO'S ART ROOM.
We painted our owls with watercolor paints, added glitter glue and mod podge and were able to take them home the same day! 

 

 

The 5th graders made a clay dish/bowl in the shape of a fish, heart or star.  We used glaze on this clay project and the students did a great job of carefully choosing glaze colors that would look good together.  This project is available from DEEP SPACE SPARKLE.

 

 

I have to admit it is a relief to start sending these home. Having 300 clay projects in the  Art room/closet can be a bit overwhelming.  There was minimum breakage with these two projects so I will definately do them again. Thanks for the ideas fellow Art teachers!

Million Dollar Ming Dynasty Vases 4th grade lesson

4th graders learned that a ming dynasty vase recently sold at a London auction for $23.6 million dollars! We looked at photos of real Ming vases using our art room technology made available thru a grant 2 years ago.  This project has several steps which are available at ARTEASCUOLA website.

 

Thanks to my intern, Ms. S (who loves all things Chinese) 4th graders got to try a few Chinese symbols to finish out their project. This was her last lesson with us, we will miss you Ms. S! 
 
I love the 3D look with the shadow under each vase, and the intricate designs they scratched into their vase shapes.  They look like a million dollars...

Frogs on a Lily Pad First Grade Lesson

We had early dismissal this Wednesday so I needed a one Art period lesson to do with the classes I would see this week because some 1st grades missed my class. 

This is a fun drawing and painting lesson that we completed in one 40 minute period.  The lesson plan is available on
DEEP SPACE SPARKLE.

Flamingo Sculptures Kindergarten

Here is the lesson I came up with after finding the flamingo poster in my room.  I mentioned it a week ago in my blog about how I get ideas for new projects.

Fabulous Flamingo Sculptures that involved painting, drawing, and assembling a 3 dimensional artwork.  The kinders were so proud of their work!

Here is the lesson steps for any art teacher wanting to try this.

1) We drew a flamingo step by step on thin cardboard (saved for me by the custodian). The size was about 9 " x 12".  We drew the body in one corner, the head in the opposite upper corner and connected them with a large letter "S".
2) I gave them white and red tempera and we looked at the flamingo poster. Kids mixed the two colors to create their pink, some made lighter for body and darker for the neck.

3) I gave them a small brush and dot of black paint for end of beak and eye.
4) Next Art period we cut the flamingos out first and talked about what flamingos eat and where they live. (algae, crabs, small fish and where it is warm!)

5) The kids used markers on 6" x 6" tagboard squares to draw two small "friends" for their flamingo... crab, fish or flowers.  
6) While they worked on their two small drawings, I taped a donated plastic stick on the back of each flamingo and this was the leg.

7) Kids cut out the two small friends, and taped with a small piece of tape to a half chenille stick.   

8) Next, I gave each student a golf ball sized piece of salt dough with blue coloring added (recipe on line). This was the base of their sculpture.

9) As we talked about sculpture the kinders worked to assemble all the pieces by pushing them into the dough.



The salt dough takes a few days to dry so the flamingos needed to be leaned against a wall to keep them straight as the dough dried. Any loose sticks were glued into the dough with hot glue after the dough had begun to harden.

So completely adorable and a great lesson in paint mixing and assembling 3D pieces!

Thank you!

Thank you to the corn farmer who lives down the road. He let me search his fields for the perfect sized stones for rock painting with 1st graders.

 

 

And you wondered what Art teachers do after school? We walk through muddy corn fields picking up stones (it was actually kind of fun).

In a few weeks the 1st graders will hear a great book about the cave paintings in France, and everyone will get to paint on a rock with acrylic paint.


UPDATE: Beautiful 1st grade painted rocks!

How Do I Get Project Ideas?

People sometimes ask me how I get ideas for a new project.  Some ideas come from other Art room web sites and I change them as needed to fit my goals for the lesson. I also use art project books or other  printed resources. And sometimes, I just see something that sparks my idea for a new project!

Here is an example of how I came up with the new Kindergarten project we just started today.

Old Poster I found in my room,

           
                PLUS




        these goals for a new project,          

                                        PLUS

an awesome custodian who saves me cardboard from food service, and some old chenille sticks 

 

EQUALS   a great new painting exploration/sculpture lesson that I will post next week. Stay tuned!

Umbrellas for a Rainy Day Kindergarten Lesson

I saw a cute project with a large umbrella on an art project website but cannot find it again to give proper credit.  Added some of my own touches to come up with this rainy day project.  The kids really enjoyed walking into the artroom to find 5 colorful umbrellas open and on display for them to look at for inspiration!   Thanks to the AI room for loaning me the extra umbrellas for the project.

 
First students traced an umbrella shape and added lines for sections.Then we talked about how to make the umbrellas colorful and we colored with markers and crayons.  We passed out "rainy"paper which we had prepped with sprinkled liquid watercolor paint on gray paper. The paper needed to be dry before the project.
 

The kinders cut out their umbrellas and glued them onto the rainy paper.

We looked at a model to see how much of a Kindergartener we could see under such a big umbrella.

    

We drew legs, shoes and made shiny puddles with plastic wrap to complete our rainy day pictures.  Nice job Kindergarteners!

 

Time for some sunshine...Mexican Sun Designs with Yarn 4th grade

Back from Spring Break and the wind is still chilly! We started working on these sun designs before break when the weather was dark and cold, hoping to brighten things up.  This week 4th graders are finishing their suns which have involved several steps and some interesting information.

First we traced around a paint mixing tray to get a 7 " circle in the center of a 12 x 12 " square of white drawing paper.  We then added rays around the circle.  I told them not to make the rays too small or wiggly as they had to be able to cut them out later.

 

The next step was to draw a face on the sun.  We looked at some Mexican Sun Face designs on the projection screen and learned that the sun is a popular symbol in Mexican art.  They added a face inside the circle, drawing the features large. To help make everything stand out the students traced with black permanent marker.  We then discussed what colors they might use to make people feel warm when they looked at our designs. Using crayons to color hard and waxy, we made our sun designs colorful.

My intern and I love the way all the suns have their own personality!  This is a crayon resist project so the next step was to use watercolor paint over our crayons. Then we let them dry.
                   

The last but very important step was adding some yarn to our suns.  We looked at yarn paintings from Mexico, they are very complex and colorful! Mexican folk artists use beeswax and yarn but we used white glue and tried not to get our fingers sticky by using a small stick to guide the yarn.

 We cut around our suns and glued them onto colorful tagboard. The sun designs turned out looking warm and colorful and creative! Good job 4th graders!