City At Night Chalk Composition Third Grade

This project is based on a picture I saw on Pinterest of a chalk picture of a city at night with glowing electrical lights. I wanted a change from chalk and glue fish project I usually do so we tried this one! 
First, we looked at cityscapes on our large projection screen and discussed how the different shapes of the buildings made it look like a city.  We used 12" x 4" donated tag board and rulers to make a stencil of a city with 4 to 6 different roofs or shapes.

 

Using brightly colored chalk pastels, students traced their stencil at the TOP of a 12" x 16 " piece of black construction paper.  

 

After tracing, 3rd graders used a towel wrapped finger to spread chalk up from edge of stencil making the "glowing" lights above the building.

 

New colors were chosen and stencil was moved down and flipped over so that different building shapes would be in front of the previous row. I also let them trade stencils once with a neighbor to get a completely different row of shapes.

Last step was to add small white window in the dark buildings and a moon and stars if they chose.  I sprayed them with hair spray to set the chalk and mounted them on colorful paper. These turned out very well and the kids are pleased with their beautiful lit up cities! 

 

                                                                                        

 

Clay Penguins Second Grade

This lesson is available on various art blogs.  I tried it with a bit of worry about whether I would get a lot of breakage with 2nd graders making clay sculpture. I tend to do flat projects with my students because there is less chance of broken projects and sad children.
                                                                  

Happily I lost only 3 penguins out of about 160 which was a big relief.  The most important thing seems to be using freshly wedged clay and making sure the kids mold the clay without breaking it apart and putting it back together. We did the entire sculpture from one small clay block, forming with our hands and adding details with a small tool.

We are using acrylic paint that was donated to the Art room to paint them which is giving them a nice smooth finished coat.

 

The 2nd graders were very pleased with their creations!

Hand Horses Kindergarten

This is such a cute project and so easy to do for young Kindergarteners.  We do this early in the year and they often make it again and again if they have free drawing time in art class.

                                          

They trace their hand, keeping fingers and thumb spread apart. We look at horse pictures and add nose, eyes, hooves and mane and tail. The kids really enjoy watching their hand become a horse!

                                     

Trading Cards Fourth Grade

Fourth grade artists work on ART TRADING CARDS whenever they finish a project before everyone else.  We will trade these cards with other 4th graders in the Spring.

 

Cardinals in the Snow Kindergarten Project

This is a popular lesson found on many art blogs.
 Love the bright red painted paper birds on the pine branch and my Kindergarten artists enjoyed using a Q tip to make it snow around their birds.  Lots of snowy days to inspire our snowy art this year!

Found Object Snowflake Printing First Grade Lesson

This lesson came from a picture on Pinterest.  First graders enjoyed printmaking with found objects and white tempera paint.  I gave them a variety of objects like these.

 

They used the edge of a piece of cardboard to make the basic shape of the snowflake with white tempera paint on dark blue or burgundy paper.

 

Then they printed with the other objects to make a beautiful snowflake.

 

A picture frame was made and dry snowflake prints were stapled onto frame.

Cupcake Paintings( SWEET ART) First grade lesson

We have had so many snow days that I don't have a lot of new projects to post.  We are just finishing up things we started in January! This 1st grade cupcake crayon resist I came up with was a lot of fun. The kids absolutely loved deciding what kind of frosting and decorations to put on their cupcakes.

First they traced the cupcake paper cup onto
12" x 12" white drawing paper. I made very large tracers to get them started on filling the paper.

 

 

Next step was to add to curved lines above the cup and then add the frosting and decorations on top.  They drew with pencil and then colored with crayons.

 

 

After everything was colored we painted watercolors over our crayon for crayon resist technique and then they used a smaller pointed brush to add a pattern in the background. They did a great job and we all wished we could taste the delicious cupcakes they were painting!