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Third and Fourth grade collaborative circle paintings

A vibrant and colorful abstract painting with various shapes, patterns, and swirls in multiple colors, inspired by collaborative circle paintings often created by third grade students.

I was so excited to see this idea of Circle Painting!!   I first learned about it at Barbara’s Thought of the Day and then at We Heart Art.  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for this wonderful idea.  We are making several collaborative canvases with this technique and they are going to be raffled off at our end of the year school FUNdraiser.  The kids had a blast creating these paintings.  This is the first video I have edited … Read more…

American Landscape Paintings–3rd/4th Grade

This watercolor painting depicts a flowing blue waterfall surrounded by autumnal trees and a bridge in the background, capturing the charm of classic American landscape paintings.

 American Landscapes  The 3/4s learned about Colonial times and Westward Expansion.  The students watched a video about American landscape artists during the 19th century and they painted their own landscapes.  One of the goals was to use inspiration from the environment to create a painting.  The students chose a landscape scene from pictures of America.  Painting lessons include how to add texture with a fan brush, how to mix colors and how to add shadows on a mountain. I showed … Read more…

Painted Korhogo Cloths– 3rd Grade

Child's colorful drawing of a person with flowers and a vibrant angular border.

This project focused on how symbols and designs are used in African art.  The students designed their own painted Korhogo cloth.  They decorated the border with symbols and drew their main figure with Sharpie.  Then, they added paint with watercolors.   1.  Introduce African Korhogo cloths.2.  Sketch ideas.3.  Draw your design on a square of muslin withe pencil.  Use a ruler to draw a border.4.  Outline with Sharpie marker.5.  Paint with watercolors.  

Pacific Northwest Coast Masks– third/fourth grades

Handmade reindeer mask with red nose, red ears, and brown eyes with white accents on a gray background, inspired by the Pacific Northwest Coast Masks.

The third/fourth grade classes made paper mache masks.  We used inspiration from the Pacific Northwest Coast masks and viewed a video about their culture.  Here are the steps we used. Start with a papermache mask form (we used some from Nasco). Then, add appendages with newspapers, LOTS of masking tape, pieces of cardboard, yogurt containers, etc. So much fun to build up a mask! After all the parts are very secured with tape (and I mean lots of tape, MORE … Read more…

Picture Frame

Colorful square mirror with a red ribbon handle, decorated with various patterns and bright colors.

Today we made picture frame ornaments with the 3rd graders.  First, I cut pieces of thin cardboard into square shapes.  Then, I cut tooling foil slightly larger than the cardboard squares.  The kids folded their tooling foil around the cardboard. Then, they used Crayola Dry Erase crayons and Sharpie markers to decorate the foil.  They left a rectangle in the middle where we will glue their class picture.  We also used Deco Art puff paint for additional details.  A ribbon … Read more…

Pointillist Trees- third/fourth grade

A Pointillism painting of a river, tree, green landscape, and a small boat under a clouded blue sky.

We learned about the artist Georges Seurat by reading Scholastic Art magazine. Students identified and described Pointillist paintings.   They created a Pointillist painting of trees showing dimension and form by color mixing. Step 1:  Introduce the work of Georges Seurat.Step 2:  Choose a smaller sized piece of paper.  We used 9 x 12″.  Lightly sketch a landscape with pencil. Step 3:  Using a paintbrush, Q-tip or pencil eraser, dip the end into paint and dab dots of color on your picture.  … Read more…

Nonobjective Line Drawing– 3/4s

Nonobjective pencil drawing with various shaded geometric shapes and lines.

Third/Fourth Grade:  The students learned how to identify realistic, abstract and non-objective art.  The 3/4s worked on a non-objective graphite drawing.  Using only shapes, lines, texture and value the students drew an interesting non-objective design.  Non-objective art is art that has no recognizable objects.  Value in art is the degree of lightness or darkness.  The students completed a value scale using pencil.  They learned how to create contrast by placing dark shades next to light shades, rough texture next to … Read more…

Self Portraits–3rd grade

A 3rd grade child's drawing of a smiling person wearing a blue cap with a hand symbol, blue shirt, and holding up both hands.

 How do artists see things differently?  What is craftsmanship?  How have artists in other cultures and times expressed themselves through self-portraits? The 3rd graders read the book Luke’s Way of Looking by Natalie Wheatley to discover how artists see things differently. Next, the class read a book about self-portraits.  They painted squares of color on a background.  Through this painting, they mixed and applied tempera paints to create tints and shades.  Then, they added tissue paper squares in places for … Read more…

Tape and Sticker Pictures

A collage flower made from various colored and patterned paper strips, accented with vibrant stickers, and "Flower by Colleen" written at the bottom.

box of stickers This was a super fun art project that I forgot to blog about earlier.  We did this at the summer art class I taught at my school.  Tape and sticker pictures.  I wrote about tape and sticker pictures earlier which I love to do with my 20 month old daughter.  The above picture is a box of stickers I made.  I took some sticky address labels, and color photocopied some patterned paper onto the sticky labels.  Then, … Read more…

Puppets!

Yellow cat puppet with button eyes, black felt whiskers and nose, and red felt ears. This puppet is made from soft fabric.

Puppets were made during my summer art class!  For this project, I drew a puppet template, which the kids traced and cut out from felt.  They cut out 2 pieces, a front and back.  Then, I hot glued them together.  The kids then cut out other pieces of felt and added googly eyes to decorate their puppet.  They attached these pieces with Elmer’s glue.  We added a large stick inside also to hold the puppet up.  We made these really … Read more…

Superheroes on Canvas

Canvas painting of a child's drawing of a person in bright colors, set against a red background with scattered dark spots.

In my summer art class, we painted superhero canvases.  The kids decided what superhero they would like to be and drew these on dry wax paper with markers and colored pencils.  Then I used gel medium (on the backs of the paper) to adhere their images to the canvas board.  Then, they used paints to paint a background.  I love them!!  There is a link to the dry wax paper at the bottom of this post.  The ages of my … Read more…

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