RAW ART

RAW ART
reading & writing with art

September 22, 2011

Guatemala Worry Dolls


We took a virtual trip to Guatemala and explored their country and customs.  One of our favorites were their Worry Dolls.  I pulled out these wooden doll pieces and every bit of scraps and whatever I could find and they hot glued away!  They were some of our favorite pieces!

Zebras and Giraffes


These turned out so great!  My after school art class made these out of old key board boxes that our technology department saved for me the beginning of the year!

September 20, 2011

2011 Conference....Meet Childrens Book Illustrators and Authors!

The annual 2011 Arkansas Reading Association Conference, Building Reading...One Story at a Time, is drawing near!  There will be lots of children's authors and illustrators presenting and doing book signings.  Mark your calender for Nov 17-18 for the Peabody Convention Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Go to www.arareading.org to register online!

September 19, 2011

Remembering September 11

In the events of September 11 our school came together to remember the lives of those lost.  My best friend, Sara Low, was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight #11.  She is in my thoughts every day.


Our 5th grade teachers and classes made this mural which I loved and wanted to share.




Van Gogh inspired Sunflowers


Kindergarten - 2nd graders were inspired to make Sunflowers after reading the non-fiction book A Field of Sunflowers by Neil Johnson.
We also looked at a few books on Van Gogh and many illustrations of his art work that were displayed in the classroom. 

The project began by using a mixture of shaving cream and blue paint to create the "swirling background" using their FINGERS.  This was so exciting and very messy, but they had a ball!  I would encourage you to tell your students to only use 2 fingers to swirl and not their entire hand.  Also if they swirl to much it will turn into a solid blue background as some of the ones you will see posted did.
Next we painted sheets of newspaper yellow to use for the petals.  They were able to use both painted and non-painted since we discussed non-fiction text and newspapers are a great source of non-fiction. 
Brown paper sacks were used to create the center of the sunflower.  Some drew seeds in the center.  They used tissue paper and construction paper to create the stem and grass.

Their final piece was to to do a small writing about something they learned about sunflowers and glue on the front. 



Keith Haring Inspired Art

My 3rd-6th grade classes enjoyed learning and creating art work and murals like the artist Keith Haring. 



We began by learning about Haring's life and looked at several of his art pieces and illustrations.  They were also introduced to his kid friendly website at haringkids.com.

The class began by doing several practice sketches.  We discussed how their figures were to show movement, use bright colors and very few details.  They also designed class murals that we hung in the halls of our school.