Another year is rapidly coming to a close, so I thought I would spend some time reviewing my favorite projects and blog posts from this year. Here are my favorite posts, in no particular order! 15. How to Paint Gorgeous Clouds with Watercolor 14. Clay Castles 13. Postage Stamp Art Project 12. Heart Photography Project with 3rd Grade 11. 25 Amazing Books for Teaching About Art 10. Editorial cartoons are a unit I teach every year. We even were … Read more…
A self portrait is one of those art projects that is always fun to do with kids. Kids often struggle to portray an accurate likeness of themselves (at least in their opinion), but their personality always shines through. I did not come up with this lesson all on my own. I saw something similar in an art ed. magazine years ago and adapted it and reused this one many times. In my opinion, that’s a great way to collect a … Read more…
I’m in love with these gorgeous clay flowers my 3rd graders made. This summer when I was on vacation in Michigan, I saw some lovely clay wall hangings in an artsy shop. They were layered clay flowers and they were HUGE! They were so awesome. I thought my students could make something similar on a smaller scale. The kids learned how to roll out a clay slab. Then, they cut out various flower templates, traced them and cut them from … Read more…
I was given a review copy of this new book See a Heart Share a Heart. The author takes photographs of hearts he comes across in daily life, from a leaf to a sidewalk crack to a moth. After reading this book to my 3rd grade students, we worked as a team to find hearts or create heart artworks indoors and outdoors. When I say we worked as a team, the kids collaborated and talked about how they could find … Read more…
Our school is building an addition, so I thought projects related to “building” would be fun. Legos are the perfect building blocks! So, we designed our own mini-figures with this template. I originally saw this idea from The Art Teacher’s Closet. We also stamped with Legos (idea via Lego Stamping from Filth Wizardry). Thanks to wonderful bloggers for these two ideas! My students LOVED them! They were so excited about these proejcts. Place your piece of paper on top of … Read more…
I still have some things to share with you from last school year. Towards the end of the year we had an editorial cartoonist visit our school. Every year our students draw editorial cartoons as part of the art curriculum. You can see some of the cartoons my students drew in 2013. When teaching about editorial cartoons, it is very important to show cartoons from both sides (in the U.S.= Republican/Democrat). It is also essential that you do not tell … Read more…
Did you know Hans Christian Andersen was an accomplished paper cutter? He created some very intricate and amazing silhouettes. I used a chapter from the book The Amazing Paper Cuttings of Hans Christian Andersen to teach about his paper cuttings. Perhaps if your students are reading fairy tales, this would be a great author/artist to incorporate. The third and fourth grade class drew silhouettes on black paper (using regular pencils) and cut them out. (Some chose to create their picture … Read more…
Take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable. This fun lesson is perfect to teach observational drawing with minimal supplies and easy set up. 1. Take off a shoe. 2. Observe the lines, shapes and contours of the shoe. 3. Concentrate and draw all of the lines you see on the shoe. Don’t forget the little details, such as shoelaces, the tongue and any patterns you see on the shoe. *Optional Step* Enlarge the shoe drawings on a photocopier. 4. … Read more…
Our local public library partnered with us to have a bookmark contest. The kids in grades K-5 each designed a bookmark based on a favorite book. We provided a template for them to compose their drawing. The library will pick a number of winners to print as bookmarks for distribution at the library. We’ve done this before at school and when the designs were returned to us, we chose other designs and copied them at an office store on card … Read more…
How is your year going? Ours is rapidly coming to a close. There is so much to do… grading, finishing projects, finishing the yearbook, planning a middle school dance, inventory and cleaning the room! Yikes, I don’t know about you, but April is the craziest month. I think in the summer, I am going to blog about some tips for organizing Student Council events. Not that I am an expert, but since I’ve done it for about 7 years now, … Read more…
Just a few quick pictures of American landscape paintings that the third and fourth graders created. A few summers ago I took a watercolor painting class which was very useful. I used some of the techniques I learned in that class to teach them about how to use the fan brush and sponges to create texture. The kids looked at photographs of landscapes from America and they learned about the Hudson River school of painters.
This 3rd grade lesson was related to the Chinese scroll paintings. I have taught this lovely project for several years and I know I saw a version of it online when I first started teaching it. I did some internet digging and this awesome scroll project from Oodles of Art looks like it might have been where I saw it. The students studied Asia in their classroom and we learned a little about Chinese art through a video: Oriental Art- … Read more…
I teach one-point perspective every year to the 3rd/4th grade class. In the past couple of years I typically have taught city perspective drawings. I saw this fantastic aquarium perspective lesson from Once upon an Art Room (grade 7), and I just had to try it with my little ones. Some of the kids liked the aquarium idea and others changed them into viewing rooms for other animals. We had wildlife sanctuaries, zoos and aquariums.
Making clay mugs with 3rd graders.. This is a great lesson that can be adaptable to pretty much any age. I’ve taught this project with middle school students and had very successful results. This is the youngest I’ve taught the clay face vase project and I think they did a very good job! Clay techniques used: rolling slabs and using a straight edge to cut a clay rectangle tracing a cutting a clay circle for the base forming facial features … Read more…
