Hurry, Hurry, Back to School Night

Always feel pressured to have artwork up for back to school night. Sometimes this can be a challenge, depending on what we are working on in the art room.  The elementary school has btosn the second full week of school. Thought I would share my current bulletin boards, especially after being featured on Bulletin Board Ideas. The Picasso's are from the 2nd graders. First time I have done this project with younger kids. They enjoyed this. Think next year may lay some ground rules for the painting process.

We started with shape in all of the grades. In kindergarten we looked at Piet Mondrian. Using shape sponges we created our shapes and outlined with black paint.

One more back to school night this Thursday for middle school. Always glad when these are over. Love seeing all the parents but it is exhausting.

Kindergarten Self-Portraits

These pieces are from some time ago. Things in life haven't exactly gone as planned. Trying to catch up on the piles of art around my art rooms. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.  Besides my mom being sick, I finally finished the yearbook, trying to get my son settled on a college, have watched the scale go up (stress equals eating for me), cuts at school - my job cut to 80%, trying to get my own artwork to be a business and just do the regular every day things.

Yeah, I know a bit of a whiner, huh?  I know everyone has a lot in their life. Just need some new ways to deal with things. Have started making lists just to organize my mind.

One thing I love is all the teacher blogs where I see how other teachers run their classrooms and all the great projects and my newest addiction, Pinterest.

I know one of the biggest things I need to get back to is God. Just having a hard time with that. Have some anger issues at the moment with losing my dad 4 years ago and my mom being sick now. Anyway, trying....need to focus on the positive but having a hard time seeing that right now. 

Faith, Hope and Love--HOPE seems to be the word I need right now.

Kindergarten Birds

Spring!!  Have done birds with every grade in the elementary school. For kindergarten we looked at Eric Carle's books and had fun painting papers the first week. I set up a color station at each table the the children rotated around the room to paint with each color.

I got this idea from Painted Paper.  

The following week I had templates for the children to trace and cut out the parts of the birds.  I had envelopes with their names on them to store all the parts. They created their bird houses using construction paper, rainbow twistables and a strip of painted paper.

The third week we glued it all together. I love these projects and they really brighten up our school hallways. Definitely going to repeat this next year.

Kindergarten Cardinals

I just love Kindergarten!  It's taken me a long time to say that.  When I first started at the elementary school I had such a hard time coming up with lesson plans for these 5 and 6 year olds.  Now I set up stations to keep them moving and busy.  They have a short attention span and are still developing their fine motor skills.  For these cardinals I demonstrated a step by step drawing and also gave them a step by step handout at the drawing station.  They outlined everything with crayon to create a resist for the watercolors at another station.  I set up two other stations, one with a coloring page and the other with puzzles.   Every bird is unique just like my students. 

Kindergarten Robots

The robots are coming!  I read this book to my kindergarten students.  Love the illustrations.  I took photos of each page and made a keynote of it so that my students could see the illustrations on my big screen.  In the first class students chose pre-cut pieces of cardboard and painted them.  The following class they made a background and glued the cardboard pieces onto it.  The final step was using "fun junk" to add details to their robots.  This was a fun project and students learned about recycling cardboard and how to use shapes to make robots. 

 

After School Drawing Class

Just did an after school drawing class for Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade and this is some of the work.  We met for an hour for three sessions.  We did all of our drawing from real items.  When they came into the room we would start with a large still life drawing.  We would than have a lesson on shading, shadow or line weight and than spend time on mini-drawings with different items each week.  I think their favorites were the beanie babies and plastic dinosaurs.   

 

Triangle Trees

Finally back.  Have had a few things going on and just haven't been able to blog.  One of those things is my diet.  I have had a lot of issues with food all my life and than about 2 months ago I started to get hives.  So right after the holidays I started on an elimination diet.  It has been a lot of  headaches and just not feeling well from withdrawal but now I feel great, though I miss certain foods.  Right now I am wheat, gluten, sugar and dairy free.  I've lost 8 lbs. and have 2 more weeks before I start re-introducing other foods.  

Anywho, here is a kindergarten project and I apologize because I can't remember where I got this lesson from.  I simplified it a bit for kindergarten but basically it is based on triangles.  The kids could either draw their own or trace templates that I made.  Went over the lines with crayon and than painted.  

Kindergarten Penguins

Got this lesson plan from Kristin Thomas.  My kids loved this project!!  Wasn't too difficult for them.  Was a great step by step lesson for students to follow.

Kindergarten Fall Trees

 I used to have a hard time with kindergarten.  It was a challenge coming up with projects that they were able to do and turned out the way I anticipated.  I have learned that you have to let children experience things in order for them to learn and every project doesn't necessarily need to look the "right" way.  I've also been able to let go and let things get messy.  Paint no longer freaks me out and even yesterday when we used chalk pastels I was okay with wiping a few faces at the end.  These trees to me show what the child has heard from me and shows how they interpret my examples.  I also can see their personalities in each one.  Love them!!
I need to let you know that if you leave me a comment the only way I can respond is thru your email or own blog.  For some reason I can't comment on comments.  Anyone know how to fix this on blogger?

Kindergarten Snow Leopards

I have been using The Water Hole by Graeme Base with my kindergarteners as a base for the projects we have been doing. Love his books!  This week we painted snow leopards. I traced the outline of the leopard head and the students used the tan to fill it in and than were given black, yellow and white for the details.  I have also made number books for them with a world map and we have been putting small photos of the animals on the continents they come from.

Piet Mondrian

All students in the elementary school are studying Piet Mondrian.  For the lower grades we looked at Mondrian's later work.  We talked about what we saw in his artwork- line, shape and color.  The following pics are from our first projects for grades k-2.

These pieces are from kindergarten.  Students were given square and rectangle sponges to use in the primary colors and black paint to create line with a paint brush.

This project was done by my 1st graders.  This project is from Teach Kids Art.

These are from my 2nd graders.  The glue wasn't dry yet, hence the spots.  Students used black construction paper with "foamy" sheets that I cut into different sizes.  They were instructed to make abstract art and to leave spaces between the pieces.  

I will have Mondrian trees from the 3rd and 4th graders soon.