Second Graders and a Frog

So I haven't posted since Halloween. . . November is just speeding by. However I couldn't let another week go by without a peak at what my students have been working on.

So my second graders recently finished a make your own scratch board project. At first students were skeptical but in the end they all really enjoyed the almost magical results. Week one I had the students choose from either warm or cool colors and using crayons color an entire piece of paper. It was important that they pressed really hard with the crayons for the project to come out right.

The following week we painted the entire paper black using tempera paint. This really threw the kids for a loop. Why would we want to paint our entire picture black? The final week it all fell into place. I demonstrated how they could use toothpicks to scratch away the black paint to reveal the colorful crayon underneath. Magic!! As for subject matter I had students look at the painting The Tree of Life by Gustav Klimt as a jumping off point. It led to some really crazy trees!

And now for a very belated update on the most popular guy in school, Ribs the Tree Frog.  For the month of October his house was redesigned by me to look like Ancient Egypt. All it took was some foam, paint, clay and a tiny dremel.

 The kids loved it and it fit in great on our unit about Ancient Egypt, of which I will be posting project pics very soon. . . No really, I actually mean soon.

Happy Halloween!!!

Our Halloween Projects!

Kindergarten - Painted Pumpkin with Cut Out Faces

1st Grade - Painting Secondary Colors Pumpkin Patch

2nd Grade - Oil Pastel Pumpkin Patch

3rd Grade - Haunted House Silhouettes

4th Grade - Symmetry Name Design Skeleton

5th Grade - Chalk Pastel Pumpkin Pile

Australia

Several grade levels have been learning about the art and animals of Australia. So I decided to post all the projects at once. First off is my Kindergartners. They learned about the Koala Bear. We talked about how a Koala is not a bear at all it's a marsupial, how they eat eucalyptus leaves and sleep 20 hours a day! This project practices cutting, gluing and painting skills. First we cut two long strips of brown paper off of one piece, the strips were used for branches and the big piece was the tree trunk. Next we cut out some leaves. Finally it was time to paint. This lesson is a good intro to paint because we only use one color and we use only one finger to paint with. No brushes to clean! Once they are dry we draw the face on with black marker and add fluff with white crayons. The second week there is usually some extra time so I show them the part of this video about koalas. (The Koalas are at 32:36 in the video)

Fourth Grade learned about the Aboriginal art of Australia known as dot art and handprint art.  We talked about why ancient Aboriginal people would leave their handprints on trees and rock walls. We learned that these were markings to show who had been where and the importance of those people. Next I told them an Aboriginal story called the Rainbow Serpent. This story is about how all the plants and animals appeared in Australia. So for the first class period I had students trace his/her hand on Kraft paper (brown bags work well too) and draw a snake slithering around the arm. They had the rest of the class time to decorate the hand with other Aboriginal symbols and designs with markers.
The next class period I showed this video. It's around two minutes and looks at real Aboriginal artists creating handprint and dot art. Afterwards we decorated around our handprints with dots. A lot of people use q-tips, but the stick end of a paintbrush works just as well.

Finally Second Grade learned a bit of both Australian art and Australian animals. The first week we learned about dot art and watched the video the fourth graders watched. We talked about why they used certain colors and shapes in dot painting. To begin they were also given Kraft Butcher paper and circle tracers (lids, bottles...) and traced different size circles on the paper. After that they decorated these circles with dot style painting. The next week we looked at a popular Australian animal, the crocodile. We learned the difference between an alligator and a croc and some other cool facts. Then we drew out our crocodiles on green construction paper, cut them out and glued them onto our dot painting background.

Cabinet of Curious 5th Graders

Fifth grade recently completed a still life project built around the idea of Cabinets of Curiosities. These Cabinets were used mostly around the 1500's and were where people would put all kinds of interesting and strange natural items; skulls, rocks, fossils. . . So I brought in a collection of nature items for the students to draw; fossils, rocks, plants, bird nests, animal pelts (which were a huge hit).

Before getting started we talked about observational drawing, really looking at what we see. I like to tell students that someone who has never seen that item should know just what it looks like based on their drawing. We also really looked at the colors of an item: "Is a stick really just brown?" or "Is the stick brown with hints of orange and red?"

For two class periods I had students drawing and coloring the items. I set them up like my fruit still life, putting several items on each table and having the items rotate around the class. Students used color pencils to color and outlined them with black marker. (I know outlining is not the norm for a lot of still lifes' but they will be cutting the items out and this helps them really pop off the page.)

The final week we made our own "cabinets" from construction paper. Students then cut and glued the objects they drew on the shelves. Some students also chose to label the items.