Happy Valentine's Day

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day with some perfectly timed heart drawings from the art room. Now, now these are not those type of heart drawings. These actually introduced my students to a new artist and to the art concept of batik. See now everyone is happy!
I showed my students work by Jim Dine of course and then pretty much let them draw hearts however they felt moved to do so. With the only rule being color in all of the paper. They mostly followed this rule. . . mostly.

Happy Valentine's Day from some of my first graders!

Astronauts

Recently the science specials teacher at my school had StarLab set up and I will freely admit that I spent some quite time relaxing in there gazing at the fake night sky. This also meant it was a perfect time to create some space themed projects, not that I really need an excuse I love all things astronomy. Hopefully after these cool art projects and StarLab some of my kids have also caught the astronomy bug. I did an astronomy/space project with each grade but I have to admit that the astronauts made by my fourth graders are my favorite. I have seen a couple different astronaut projects on line but most of them had the students draw his/her face in the helmet. I wanted to take a slightly different approach. Instead of a face in the helmet we added the reflection of either the moon or the earth.

To begin I showed some pretty cool videos of real astronauts in actual space! I will say it completely blew some minds. We watched an astronaut eat in space, sleep in space, how to wash your hair in space, and what happens to a wet towel in space <-- (my favorite one). Once we got drawing students were given a large circle template to trace for the helmet. From there students were shown how to draw the rest of the astronaut suit. The following week we talked about how lights and shadows typically look in space, very strong raking light from one side. Students shaded his/her astronaut with black and blue colored pencils and then could add patches to the uniform.

The final week each student was given a black piece of paper and we went over how to draw either the moon or the earth. This part was done with chalk pastels and they could also add shooting stars and the like around the edge. Once this was completed we actually cut out where the face would be in the helmet and glued the black paper behind the astronaut. This resulted in the final look of the earth or moon reflecting in the helmet!

Clay!

Well we finally made it! My school just had its first full five day week since before winter break! As promised I wanted to show a bit of the clay work that has been happening among all these shortened weeks. My fifth graders have been making Face Jugs. Here is a link to a PBS video we watched before we got started.  This art form originated with the slaves being brought over from Africa and really sparked some interesting discussions in my room. For the remainder of the hour I had the students sketch out his/her idea.

The following week we dove in. I demonstrated how we would be making the jugs by combining two pinch pots together and cutting a hole in the top for the jug opening. From there students could use any combination of methods to make the face for the jug; coils, slabs. . .

Now we have finally reached a point where all the jugs are complete and drying on the shelves, for which my hands are thankful. Being allergic to the clay and working with it for days on end are no fun for my dry, incredibly itchy hands! Anyways I hope to have them all fired and ready to glaze when we return from mid-winter break. That's right in another week my school has another break! Craziness. Here are a few jugs waiting to be fired.

Kindergarten has also been working on making clay fish which they just got to paint this week. I simply used liquid watercolors, much cheaper and much easier. The kids loved them and they always have such personality.