January 31, 2013

Snowflake Bently & Foiled Flakes

 3rd and 4th grade did their snow dance and helped bring in Arkansas' first white Christmas with these fabulous foiled snowflakes.  We actually used 2 books for our art influence on this project.  The first is J. Martin's book Snowflake Bentley which is about Wilson Bentley was a famous writer and photographer for his images he captured of snowflakes.  This great story tells of his life in a easy way for students to understand.  It also has lots of great facts about the tiny crystals.  We also used the book The Snowflake:  A Water Cycle Story by N. Waldman that shares the story of what happens to the snowflake each month of the year.
My students did these short writings about a time they had spent in the snow to display with their pieces.  They were really proud of them.  If you want the step by step directions you can use my PowerPoint by clicking on this site:  http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/huskeyj72501-1655397-snowflake-foil-art/

 





January 25, 2013

"Love Birds" poems with Gail Gibbons & William Morris

What's not to love about these???
They are coming together even better than I expected!  We are gearing up for a little LOVE art to get ready for upcoming Valentine's Day and I came up with this "lovely" project.  

You can see the steps and pictures below for developing our "Love Poems" and creating our pieces.  We used the artist William Morris as our inspiration since he was a creative artist that also create POETRY!  I modified it a bit for Kindergarten after I pulled my hair out in my first class.


We use Gail Gibbons Book Valentine's Day as our non-fiction book for our inspirations.
       

You can also use my how to power point at:  Love Bird Power Point

1.  We made a word wall of all the things we LOVED in each class.  I wrote the list on the board.
(With Kindergarten I actually wrote out each sentence "I love my family." for them to copy.)
2.  They used red or pink and completely filled up their poster with "I love" statements to make their own "I Love" poem.  They used words from our list or sounded out their own if they wanted to add more.
3.  We used a piece of pink construction paper and folded it in half like a hamburger fold.  They drew one love bird on the front.  We looked at the shapes of birds and discussed how to make it simple and fill up the paper.  (Kindergarten did NOT do the bird.)
 4.  They kept the paper folded and cut out the bird so they would end up with 2 love birds.
5.  Then they placed them on their paper so they were kissing...they had lots of fun with this.
6.  We used sharpies to trace the birds and they could add hearts or other details w/ sharpies.
7.  Next they painted their birds by creating tints of red.  They could paint anything they drew, only the POSITIVE space.  They were not allowed to paint in the NEGATIVE space.  (Kindergarten painted a large heart on their paper to keep it simple.)
8.  They signed their work with the black sharpie.  
9.  Next week after it dries they are going to add the eye and wing so it will show up better and I'm thinking paint a border, but not sure yet.




January 15, 2013

Snow Friends Winter Landscape Collage




Snow Friends by Butler & MacNaughton is a cute little story about a bear that can't find a friend to play with in the snow so he decides to build the Best Snowman EVER to have a friend to play with that day.  I used the story because it was winter, we just had our first White Christmas in Arkansas that I have ever scene and the pictures were great examples to teach my students the Element of Space.  As you can see in the page below we were able to talk about depth, overlapping and the key part of our piece (background, foreground and middleground).  The students loved exaggerating the word "EVER" with me as I read because it is repeated a few times and we spent some time predicting what type of animal might pop out of the burrow.  
 
I created the power point that is linked below to serve as my guide and instructions for my students to create their torn paper collages.  My kindergarten-2nd graders had a great time creating these and they turned out pretty well.  There were a few students that just couldn't get past the fact I wouldn't let them use scissors, but in the end they were pleased with their pieces.


My power point that I used is the link below:
One of my student's parents donated the left over scrap-booking paper which turned out perfect for the trees.  I love the way some of them had the white outline around the trees.

We used q-tips to create the snow & sharpies to draw the details on the snowman.


January 10, 2013

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's my ART SUPERHEROS!

 So Loving This!  At the Arkansas Art Educators Conference I attended a session on paint.net.  It has some similar components to photoshop but it has a free download and seems to be easier for students to use.
 Ok... this was my first experience at using my new friend paint.net so I have a long way to go I know, but it was super fun. I did this first with my afterschool digital art class of 3rd-6th graders.  We did a quick look at the site that I had downloaded in our lab at school.  We took headshot photos of each of my students.  They learned how to design the background and tools for editing.  They learned how to take images and overlay them after cutting and cropping.  Our next piece was to add text, but unfortunately time was not our friend.  It took us 3 class periods to complete just this piece, but by our final class they had the hang of it and were ready to do more!  I am planning to try it again with my 6th graders this 9 weeks and try a different lesson.  My fingers are crossed and the students can't wait!  Below is a quick you tube video link that shows you some basic tools of paint.net as well as the site for the free download.  The download site has random download buttons so be sure you just click the one you need.

Click below to watch a quick how to video to showcase some of the tools on the site.





January 01, 2013

The Nutcracker Ballet sketches

My 2nd   & 3rd graders did these  Great sketches after we looked at some clips of the ballet and did a little artist study on Degas.