Astronauts on the Moon

Second grade made space people on the moon collages. (I got the idea from the Painted Paper blog.) First we sponge painted the moon with different shades of gray and sprayed on the stars with watered down white tempera. Then we made the space suits by rounding off squares and rectangles. After pasting those on we embellished the suits with sequins and metallic paper. On the third day, we made the flags and the rockets. Zoom! We read about the phases of the moon, and learned the order of the planets and read about space suits before making this project.

Cats in a Basket

Some of the  4th and 5th graders made their cats in baskets with yarn, after Halloween passed. They had a great time drawing the fur with chalk and were challenged, but up to the task of creating the basket weave.

Van Gogh's Pumpkin

5th grade painting pumpkins in Van Gogh's style after looking at Starry Starry Night.

Oil Pastel Owls

My 4th graders made owls and these girls have theirs framed and hanging in our administration building. Congratulations and great job!

Halloween Cats

 Grades 3 and 5 made Cats in Pumpkins for Halloween. BOO!

How we teach the arts is as important as the fact we're doing it - Michael Rosen

I found these inspiring words for teaching art, by Michael Rosen, on Pinterest:

For practitioners of all kinds, I've sketched out a checklist, as much for myself as others, to keep in mind how best to ensure that arts in education is worthwhile for all.

Children and young people involved in the arts should:

1) have a sense of ownership and control in the process;

2) have a sense of possibility, transformation and change – that the process is not closed with pre-planned outcomes;

3) feel safe in the process, and know that no matter what they do, they will not be exposed to ridicule, relentless testing, or the fear of being wrong;

4) feel the process can be individual, co-operative or both;

5) feel there is a flow between the arts, that they are not boxed off from each other;

6) feel they are working in an environment that welcomes their home cultures, backgrounds, heritages and languages;

7) feel that what they are making or doing matters – that the activity has status within the school and beyond;

8) be encouraged and enabled to find audiences for their work;

9) be exposed to the best practice and the best practitioners possible;

10) be encouraged to think of the arts as including or involving investigation, invention, discovery, play and co-operation and to think that these happen within the actual doing, but also in the talk, commentary and critical dialogue that goes on around the activity itself.

As young people work, they will find their minds, bodies and materials changing. As agents of that change, they will inevitably change themselves. They will find out things about themselves as individuals – where they come from, how they co-exist with people and places around them – and they will pick up (or create) clues about where they are heading. They will also find new ways to talk about the arts. Demystifying them, if you like.

I believe that if we set out the stall for the arts in this way, we won't find ourselves trying to advocate a particular art form – say, painting – for what are deemed to be its intrinsic civilising qualities. Instead, we will be calling for a set of humane and democratic educational practices for which the arts provide an amenable home.

Bubbles

For the first project of the year, my fourth and fifth graders took the bubble challenge. This is a great project for teaching the difference between transparent, translucent and opaque. We had to keep most of the bubbles black, otherwise they would look more like marbles, which is another fun project! This is a great activity, which had a 99.9% success rate and the kids loved it. I got the idea from Pinterest and I recommend you try it.
This year I wrote a MEF grant, called "Paint, Paint, Paint." The grant gave me $500.00 to buy art supplies. The Florida Consortium of Education Foundation funded this grant for which I am truly thankful. I used it to buy craypas, paper, tempera paint and ceramic glazes. This generous grant will make all this year's projects possible.

Sea Turtles - Grades 2 and 3

This was the first project of the year for my second and third grade students. The second graders painted theirs and the third graders used colored chalk with a little diamond dust for the sea foam. We made an open mouth and the kids could use folds to make the turtles pop up.

African Landscapes

These collage/paintings were made by my first graders. I got the idea for the landscape from Painted Paper. She taught her students about Georgia O'Keefe. I taught my students about African savannahs and zebra and elephant habitats. We used homemade rubber band paint brushes to paint the elephant and grass textures. That was fun for everyone.

Donors Choose Projects

The top two are first grade. They learned how to sew straight stitches and then how to sew on beads. The pillows are by third graders. They learned cross stitches, satin stitches, chain stitches and straight stitches. They also sewed on beads and are finishing up on a sewing machine. Second and fourth grades wove on card board looms. They could turn their weavings into bookmarks, small blankets, bugs, or figures. These projects were very well liked and some children even made 2 projects; one to take home and one for class.
Thank you Donors Choose Award for providing the materials for these projects!

I'm an Art Teacher

Monet's Upcycled Waterlilies

This was a second grade project inspired by Pinterest. The students learned about Monet and Impressionism and Diego Rivera for brushstroke techniques. We used the rubber band paint brushes for the water and gold acrylic paint for the frames. A special thanks goes out to Kari and her mom Kristy, aka the lunch lady, for saving and delivering all these apple trays to art. THANK YOU SO MUCH!