Spring Time Projects!

Spring is upon us and I decided to celebrate the season with some spring related projects.  Here in Texas one of our biggest prides is the state flower, the Bluebonnet!  My 2nd through 5th graders did a mixed media project with Bluebonnets and my Kinder through 1st graders did a festive colored egg hatching into a baby chicken with Bluebonnets in the background.  They were so happy with the results that I had to share the process.

2nd through 5th grade Bluebonnets were done partially in markers.  They created the grass, leaves, and stems in watercolor markers.  Then, we mixed up a small value scale of blue (3 shades) and painted those beautiful petals on.  You can see my painting demonstration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XC794Jtefs

Kinder through 1st grade used markers and a paper plate to make their egg shells, baby chickens, and Bluebonnets.  They started by decorating a paper plate with markers.  They then drew in their chicken, background, and flowers with markers.  Then we cut the paper plate like a broken egg shell and glued it on top of the picture.  You can see the demonstration of my drawing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQIMpnBGYoY

The students really enjoyed this project and are begging me to let them take it home so it must have been a winner!

Britto Inspired Clovers

In a social media art group that I follow I saw a ton of projects around Valentine's Day inspired by Romero Britto.  I love Britto's artwork but I thought to myself, do I really need to do a heartsy fru fru project based on him?  The answer of course, no!  What's the next holiday coming up?  St. Patricks Day!  This is not a holiday that a lot of people do projects on and if they do they usually have rainbows and pots of gold.  Why not make it a colorful pattern filled piece of art!  So I found some short videos on YouTube that talked about Britto and showed his artwork.  I talked with my students about how he used patterns and colors to show happiness.  We talked about how we find those colors and patterns everywhere and how products now days push those colors and patterns because of how they make people feel.  We talked some about St. Patrick's Day and the real meaning of the holiday vs. the "American version" of the holiday, then we set out to create something different.  We decided on the iconic 4 leaf clover shape and went with a Britto inspired color/pattern pallet to it, purposely staying away from anything generic (green clover, rainbow, pots of gold, leprechauns).  This is what we came up with:

3rd-5th traced a clover shape, outlined and added patterns in sharpie, then colored with oil pastels.  Afterwards they cut it out and pasted it to black 9x9 inch paper.

Kinder-2nd used a clover printout, they colored and added patterns in crayon.  They also cut it out and pasted it to brown paper.  They then could design the brown paper how they wanted.  This picture is a clover that a Kinder student designed.  Unfortunately that Kinder student moved before finishing the project, so I finished it for him and used it as an example. 

If the students finished early, which some did, they got to use my new clipboard station for free draw!  They LOVE free draw, it is such a good early finisher reward.  and I always send them back to make corrections on their work if I feel they didn't put in the right amount of effort.  Some will try anything to finish early but they know I'll send them back if they do so it doesn't happen often. 

A good resource for this drawing center is the printouts I get from my Art Hub For Kids subscription.  I just print these out and laminate them and they're perfect for early finishers or a day of drawing centers!

I hope you enjoyed reading my post.  If you have suggestions or comments please leave a comment below!  Thanks for reading!

Black History Month 5th Grade Collaborative Art Pieces

Hey guys!  I am so proud of my 5th graders right now.  They stepped out of their comfort zone and worked together to create this super duper collaborative piece for Black History Month.

I am extremely proud of them.  To some this may not seem like the best work, but for 10 and 11 year olds that have never done anything like this before it's pretty amazing

So here's how we did it.  I first found some templates online of Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks.  I printed them off the computer and folded them until I had made 32 squares.  I then labeled each square with a letter and numbered them in order of their place in the picture, then cut them all out.  I cut 9x6 sheets of 80lb drawing paper for this project.  The students took one drawing paper and a square of the picture.  Their objective was to transfer the image onto the drawing paper so that it looked like a bigger version of the square.  Some struggled and others persevered, but they all managed to get a piece done.  We then set them all out on the table and put them in order, then started piecing them together like a puzzle.  We taped them together on the back and erased all the smudges.  Voila! They made a large scale drawing of some of the most important people to black history month!  In the picture above it is hung in the gym to go along with the 4th grade Black History Month presentation.  I later moved it to the hall which you can see in this picture.

I did, however, have 4th grade's help on the letters that spell out Black History Month.  That was simply finding an online template of the letters, printing them out, and having the students color and cut them out.  Then I glued them onto a black paper backing.  Here's some closeups of the coloring they did.

I also went online and found some insightful quotes from these people with their pictures on them.  That way if anyone wasn't sure who it was they could look at the photo and see who it is.  Here is some closeups of those photos.

And of course I want you to see the drawings 5th grade did up close too.

This project was such a big hit, I'm already thinking about what kind of collaborative piece I can do next!  Do you have any ideas?  Share them with me in the comments!

Value Scales and Spheres!

Hi everyone!  This week I am teaching 5th grade how to do a value scale and a sphere shape with shadow.  We are using ebony pencils.  These kids have had an extreme lack of teaching in the shading world so I thought this would be a good start.  Their main objective is to create a value scale and then to draw a sphere with a horizon line, light source, and a shadow.  I'm hoping this lesson goes over well!  I created a demo video to show them how to do it and to free up my hands for when they need help!

This is actually my first lesson with ebony pencils so please, if you have any tips and tricks, comment below with your suggestions!  I love the feedback!

YouTube Channel is up!

I am so excited I had to post about it!  My YouTube channel is up and running!  I will be posting all of my class demo's there if you would like to use some for your own classroom use.  My students have already been visiting my channel with their parents.  I can't tell you how great that makes me feel! There isn't many video's yet, but subscribe because more are coming!  If you want to check it out the link is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDGkEYSDpejTkP3Ftt-OrCw

Love Monster Wax Resist Watercolor Painting with Demo Videos!

This week my kindergarten and first grade students are doing this fantastic Love Monster wax resist watercolor painting based on the character from the book "Love Monster".

We started by listening and looking at the artwork in the book "Love Monster" by Rachel Bright (link here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8hrvFuk3kg)

After watching the book on YouTube, we watched a demo video I made to help give instructions.

This part of the assignment did not last long, but we didn't have enough time to start painting so I let them decorate heart cutouts to take with them.  The next week was part two of the assignment.  For this part I made two short demo video's to guide them.

The demo video's are a new thing for me.  The kids really enjoyed them and told me it was "sooo cool" and asked "When are you posting them to YouTube??"  So, guess what my next move is.  Yes I'm going to start a YouTube channel for my demo videos.  At least the kids can look me up and practice their art at home!  Score one for the Art teacher!  I hope you enjoy the videos as much as my students did! ( EDIT:  New YouTube channel here!  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDGkEYSDpejTkP3Ftt-OrCw )

Ruler Reinforcement

Last week and this week my students are working on a project called Happy Hearts.  It is based off of a newer artist named Jenny Murphy.  You can see her website here:  http://www.jennymurphydesigns.com/

The students are doing a portion of her Happy Hearts design in order to reinforce their knowledge of how to use a ruler properly.  I showed a demo of using a 12x4 paper, dividing it into 3 boxes by measuring the proper inches.  This brought in a little math because they had to solve 12 divided by 3 to find the first inch mark and then addition (+4) to find the second inch mark.

After dividing their paper into 3 equal boxes, they had to draw a heart in each one and do vertical and horizontal zig zag lines with their ruler on top of the hearts.  They then outlined everything in black sharpie and colored with crayons.  I did this with 2nd through 5th grade.  Higher grades had to do more complex color combinations.  Here are some pictures of the results from 3rd grade: