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Category Archives: animals

Fingerprint Plates for School Auction

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A hand-painted plate with a panda holding colorful balloons, surrounded by butterflies, featuring the text "Upper Primaries 2017-2018." This delightful piece would make a wonderful item for a School Auction.

We made 3 fingerprint plates for our school auction. The materials we used were Bisque fired dinner plates from Mayco. Underglaze in various colors Fine line writer bottle (filled with glaze) Clear Gloss Glaze The first was a Dr. Seuss themed “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” plate for the Kindergartners.  The fish are made from their fingerprints. The second was a bird plate for the 1st graders.  All of the birds were made from the kids’ fingerprints.  Their … Read more… →

Romero Britto Inspired Animals

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Romero Britto Inspired Animals

Romero Britto‘s colorful and bold style appeals to children and many people of all ages. Why do I love Romero Britto? Because he’s making things that are HAPPY and the world needs more of that. It works great to tie in with the study of patterns. His art is full of color. Kids can relate to it. His artwork has been made into many products, which shows ways artists can make a living as a contemporary artist and the potential … Read more… →

Bird and Nest Art Project

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Two paper birds with colorful feathers in brown nests. Text: "Bird & Nest Art Project" at the bottom.

Visual textures are implied textures you can see such as cloudy, shiny, and windy and can be drawn as such. The opposite of visual texture is tactile texture which is texture that you can feel.  Feathers, yarn, ribbon and tissue paper are used to add real texture in this sculpture project featured in this blog post. There are many ways to teach about texture including metal tooling, clay and sculpture (like you will see here.)  This bird in a nest art … Read more… →

Watercolor Sharks and Free Shark Drawing Guide/Coloring Pages

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Two colorful sharks, one large blue and one small orange, swimming in an ocean-themed watercolor painting, beautifully capturing the essence of marine life.

Recently, I reviewed the book How to Survive as a Firefly and showed you a firefly art project to go along with the book.  I also received a free copy of How to Survive as a Shark from Innovation Press.  This book is illustrated in a similar style and is very cute and engaging.  There is a lot of great scientific information about sharks in this book. From the publisher’s description:  How to Survive as a Shark provides a unique take on fish … Read more… →

Toothpaste Batik on Fabric

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A child's drawing of a unicorn with a pink mane and horn stands under a night sky with stars and a crescent moon, capturing the scene with the intricate detail of batik art.

My creative and wonderful blogging friend, Phyl, has posted several times about her toothpaste batik process.  I have admired the results for years and decided to try it last year for our Wild about the Arts Fine Arts Night.  I was hesitant to try because of the logistics.  It was not a quick and easy project, but I loved the process and I loved that it was so “different” than other things my students have experienced. These were made with 4th … Read more… →

“Wild About the Arts” Fine Arts Night

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Colorful poster with various animals and "Wild About the Arts" text in bold, vibrant letters, celebrating Fine Arts Night.

It has been several weeks since our Fine Arts Night and I have been waiting until things settled down here to write all about it. Many, many thanks to my co-worker Katie McEnaney for taking photographs of the event! “Wild About the Arts” Fine Arts Night We had our first ever Fine Arts Night.  The night combined musical performances, an art show and art activities to celebrate the arts!  We decided on an animal theme. We displayed one artwork from … Read more… →

Make Your Own Creature with Fabric and Paper Scraps

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A collage featuring colorful, patterned animal art and a book titled "Zigzag," created using paper scraps. Text reads "Make a Creature Collage.

Little artists love digging into a big box of fabric scraps to find the perfect patterned piece that speaks to them. We have an upcoming Fine Arts Night with the theme of Animals. We are calling it “Wild about the Arts”, which someone suggested in the Facebook art teachers group.  The 1st graders made these fun creature collages.   First we read the book Zigzag by Robert Souci and looked at the illustrations of fabric dolls. The students made creature collages, either … Read more… →

Animal Cloth Paintings inspired by Korhogo Cloths

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Colorful drawing of a purple, winged unicorn with a rainbow background and diamond-shaped decorations.

My 3rd grade classes learned about African Korhogo Cloth paintings. They had been studying Africa in their Social Studies class.  Here are some of the resources we used:  information about the cloth paintings and a couple of YouTube videos– Take a Look at African Korhogo Cloth and Senufo Art (although I do caution you that there is some tribal nudity at the beginning of this documentary in the intro, so start it after 20 seconds in).  There is a really cool tribal dance portion … Read more… →

Animal Personality Drawings

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Animal Personality Drawings

Here is a really fun twist on self-portraits!  I teach the grades K-4/5 at my school and the middle school art teacher is in charge of grades 5/6-8.  We have a new art teacher at the middle school level this year and her name is Jayne Baitinger-Peterson.  She comes to our school with over 30 years teaching experience at the elementary level and she has been enjoying the change with middle school youth.  She gave me permission to share these … Read more… →

Chicks at School

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Handmade art of three yellow chicks with feathers on paper, ideal for school projects or classroom decoration.

We have some chicks at school.  Chicks, like baby chickens. One of the science teachers taught the kids about the life cycle of chickens and the kids watched as the eggs were incubated and hatched. They grow so quickly! With all the excitement of the hatching chicks, the students were thrilled to create some chick artwork.  Here is a mural/bulletin board that students in grades 2-3 worked together on. Next, we did a step-by-step project in kindergarten to make a … Read more… →

Watercolor Animals with 5th and 6th Grade

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Colorful watercolor painting of a green parrot with blue wings and an orange tail, set against a bright blue sky.

With all the fancy projects an art teacher can find on Pinterest, sometimes it’s good to go back to the basics.  Simple drawing and painting of familiar subjects.  This week my students drew art manekins.  You could see much more concentration in the students than while doing other projects.  I was looking through the folders on my computer and found these animal watercolor paintings my students had made last year. For more watercolor lessons, check out these old posts: How … Read more… →

Stuffed Animal Still Life Drawings with 1st Grade

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1st Grade children drawing stuffed animals with crayons and markers. Text reads "Stuffed Animal Still Lifes.

Do you want to know what will really get first graders excited about drawing still lifes?  Have them bring in their own stuffed animals!  I invited the kids to bring in their favorite stuffed animals to draw.  I also had a garbage bag full of my own stuffed animals from home in case someone forgot to bring in one. I demonstrated how to observe the shapes and positioning of the stuffed animals and then I let the kids get to … Read more… →

Animal Shrinky Dinks in Summer Art Camp

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Animal Shrinky Dinks in Summer Art Camp

This summer I taught a one week art workshop called Artsy Animals.  The camp had kids going in to grades 1-4 and it took place for 3 hours every day.  Now camp was much more laid back than regular art class, so we did not accomplish *as much* as 3 hours of school time, but I think the kids had a really good time. We made Shrinky Dink necklaces!  Each student got one sheet of Shrinky Dinks Crystal Clear paper.  … Read more… →

Rubber Ducky Public Sculptures in St. Joseph, Michigan

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A rubber ducky dressed as a cowboy with a hat, red bandana, green checkered shirt, and blue overalls.

A couple of weeks ago we took a summer trip to my brother’s cabin in Michigan.  We spent some time in the lovely city of St. Joseph, Michigan.  It is right on Lake Michigan and we enjoyed playing in the sand, walking on the piers, eating ice cream, playing on the beach playground, splashing on the splash pad and tinkering around in the two children’s museums.   As an art teacher, I was delighted to see large public art sculptures of … Read more… →

Bird Pictures with First Graders & Studying Audubon

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First graders create bird paintings after learning about Audubon.

I am so proud of how well my first graders drew these beautiful birds and I’m excited to share them with you. We started by reading the beautiful book The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon.  This book is a wonderful connection to science as Audubon was a fascinating man who studied the migration of birds and painted them.  Your budding scientists will love this story. The students looked at reference photos of birds from books.  … Read more… →

  • Banner with colorful artwork promoting an art shop featuring kindness coloring pages, artist activities, and resources for teachers.