The Mill by my little Rembrandts

 Moving through our 18th century artist on our time line this year we have reached Rembrandt.  My K-2nd grade students did an artist study on Rembrandt and looked at many pieces of his artwork.  My intern, Mr. Willett, planned out a lesson revolving around Rembrandt's painting The Mill.  This inspiration led our students to do crayon resist windmills for their art pieces.  This was a great opportunity for our class to work on placement and use the horizon line in our art work as well. 

                 

Vermeer-ish: My Mother with a Pearl Earring

Kindergarten - 2nd grade did a study on Vermeer and we focused on The Girl with the Pearl Earring painting.  They loved creating their twist and drawing their mothers with a special pearl bead hot glued in the ear!  They drew them with sharpie then colored the blue scarf and remainder with crayons.  SO VERMEER-ish!

The Egyptian Experience

We just completed our Egyptian Experience by making self portraits with Egyptian Headdresses, Cartouches and Egyptian Hieroglyphs!  Thanks to Georgetown Elementary blog, http://josettebrouwer.edublogs.org/2012/05/16/third-grade-egyptian-portraits/, Kindergarten - 2nd grade used their great ideas of using student photography to create our pieces.  We were also studying line so each class made borders around their pieces to incorporate line design around their art.

3rd-4th grade used water colors to create hieroglyphs and 5th-6th painted canvas Cartouches. 

One of my students was so inspired he went home and created these awesome pyramids using cardboard glued together and sand from his sandbox out back!  Super Cool!

Prehistoric Cave Art - Cave of Lascaux

We are beginning our year in art following a time line dating back 32,000 years ago and traveling to France to learn about a famous Cave of Lascaux. 

 

Our class had a great time learning about the Cave of Lascaux. The book First Painter by Kathryn Lasky with amazing illustrations by  Rocco Baviera was a perfect fit for our study.  The book even illustrated how people from that era left their hand print as their signature on the cave walls.  Finally the students created their own cave art drawings under our own classroom cave  which was made from a large black sheet draped over tables.  Thanks to my new teacher intern Mr. Willett together we constructed a huge cave outside our art room covering the ceilings and hallways with the student produced cave art!

We also took a virtual field trip inside the cave at:  http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/02_00.xml

What is art to you? Student sign in board.

What is art to you?  My students love signing in on the dry erase board in my room.  This was my question for the first week of school.  My students are allowed to sign in one time and answer the question on the board.  Everyone LOVES dropping in and reading their comments.