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…
