Day of the Dead

Second grade painted the dancing skeletons and fifth made the sugar skulls. Still more images to come...

The Dot, Circle Prints and Op Art Collages

I started the year off with The Dot with K and 1, then they did the line painting from an earlier post. Then k did the circle prints. The circle prints were a big hit and I'm going to do them again next year and I'll likely do it with first grade this year. You can see the dot had some interesting results. The kids were happy they didn't have to just paint the dot, or just the outside of the dot.  Third grade made the op art  collages. On week 1 they learned about 1-point perspective and drew cubes and houses and on week 2 we watched and discussed Op art by Jamison Cook from youtube, then we started the collage, which took two weeks to finish.

Scarecrows

I did this collage with second grade. We read the Lonely Scarecrow for inspiration.

Straight Line Wonder

I did this project with kindergarten and first grade. We read, discussed and kindergarten even acted out The Straight Line Wonder, by Mem Fox for this project's inspiration. The book's about a line that doesn't want to be straight any more and the kids just love it. It's a perfect book for introducing lines in an artwork. As you can see, we also used color, shape and pattern too. I love all the different interpretations.

Surreal Landscape

My fifth graders learned about surrealism and 1 point perspective. We observed that many surreal paintings were images of landscapes that included disparate images, such as these:

 We made our landscapes with colored chalk and the cubes were drawn with colored pencil. The cubes were placed to show movement as if they were tumbling from the sky.

The Fog Comes on Little Cat Feet

This is a project I did with 4th grade for halloween, with Carl Sandburg's poem in mind.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Best in Show (for that age category)

This owl was the second project for 4th grade last year. It was an all around success but there were a few that really stood out and this was one of them. The district office asked for some student work to hang, so this hung there until June when I retrieved it to put in the Art Center exhibit. I'm so glad I did because it won best in show and they used it in their poster and brochures. What an honor to have work "published" at such an early age. Way to go Jadeyn!

Final Art Exhibit of 2015 - Art Center Manatee

 

As you can see we have some very talented students who work really hard. I want to thank them for letting me hold on to their artwork for such a long time. The big show of the year didn't occur until school was over and some of the artworks were the first project of the year. I hope the having a framed picture will make up for the delay.:)

Do Schools Kill Creativity? Great Video link from Ted Talks

Click on link
Do schools kill creativity? Ted Talks