Kindergarten art class ended the same way it began...with self-portraits! It is truly incredible to witness the growth that happens in each grade, but nothing compares to kindergarten. Proud of their pieces- and rightfully so! These artists have grown so much over the past 9 months.
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Engaging every student in class, at the same time, with the same activity. Impossible, right? Not with CHOPPED! Art Class Edition! This is the closest I have coming to feeling art teacher enlightenment. The 25 minutes I spent observing my 5th and 6th graders working collaboratively to share ideas and problem solve in order to find their best solution was bliss, and had me re-thinking the way I teach and how I want to change the structure of my class in order to create this environment more often.
As a lead in to our clay dinosaur fossils, 2nd graders did a quick round of observational drawing (which they nailed, by the way, as seen above.)
Here are our fossils! This was my very first time teaching clay and using a kiln, and I pretty much put it off as long as possible. I was terrified of blowing everything up. BUT, we got through it without a hitch and I am so proud of how they turned out! First, they filled in the fossil imprints with white crayon, then covered the remainder of their pieces with different shades of brown. I mixed up a few batches of watered-down india ink that students applied with a paintbrush over the crayon. After everything was dry, I sprayed a couple coats of clear matte finish over the top. Inspired by Art Teacher extraordinaire, Kaitlyn Edington, who used the a CD printing method as the background for some student self-portraits (find other awesome ideas on her Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/artwithmrs.e/?hl=en) I tried CD printing for the first time with my first graders. To create the CD flower prints, students painted a CD (that I had hot glued a marker cap on the back, to make it easier to hold,) used a tool or their finger to draw a flower design into the wet paint, then pressed the CD facedown on a large piece of white paper. We used tempera paint, which seemed to dry just a little too quickly for the 1st grade pace. Because some of my slower workers ended up with flower prints that were a little thin, the next day we broke out the oil pastels and watercolors to fill in any empty areas, add details, and outline. We also used those oil pastels and watercolors (this combo is always a hit with the younger crowd) to create unique vases for their flowers. To finish it off, they chose a large piece of colored paper for their backgrounds and a patterned piece of scrapbooking paper for their tablecloth. This presented us with the perfect opportunity to talk about space.
Prints from Andy Warhol's Flowers Series, 1964 After watching a mini documentary about the life of Andy Warhol, 5th graders had the opportunity to explore a couple different kinds of printmaking. While the original Flower Series was created using the screen printing method, we opted for relief printing. Relief printing is one of my favorite types of art to create on my own time, and the kids seems to enjoy it just as much as I do. There is something about carving away at the block...definitely a practice in mindfulness! I LOVED the way these turned out, and they were proudly displayed until the end of the year.
"It's just hard for me to imagine anything besides red circles," my cooperating teacher's substitute said, imagining what would happen as as I set up the apple still life scenes in preparation for 1st grade. Part of me was like shoot, is she right? Is it nuts to teach still life drawing to a bunch of 6 year olds? But then I remembered, these 6 year olds I'm teaching, they're pretty awesome. 6 year olds in general are pretty awesome, and they can definitely do this. And oh boy, they did. To introduce the lesson, I used a lovely resource I found through the Met's website (you can find it here: http://www.metmuseum.org/content/interactives/cezannes_apples/cezanne.html) I started with the book offered on the site (bonus: it reads itself!) and as a class we talked about how Cézanne made art- emphasizing how he looked very closely and the shapes and colors that he saw. "All of us have seen apples before. We know what they look like, right?" I asked the students, as I drew the classic apple shape, using only one shade of red to fill it in, topping it off with a single bright green leaf and a brown stem. They agreed. They knew what apples looked like. I held up my sheet of paper, and again, they agreed, it was definitely an apple. "When Paul Cézanne drew and painted his apples, did he just draw what he thought they looked like? I Or did he look at them very ter a brief discussion, I demonstrated how to draw a still life, again emphasizing color and shape.I encouraged students to start with the big shapes first (the apples and the plate they were sitting on) and then focus on the smaller shapes and all the different colors they could see. We talked about all the different colors we saw within the apples, and after a few reminders and a little review, I let them loose. They got to work, and I swear, my little color-loving heart nearly exploded. The complexity of their color choices- ugh, I'm drooling now just thinking about it. A far cry from red circles! I tell ya, these 6 year olds? They got it. After completing their apple still lifes, I had them do another to serve as the background. This time, we used 12x18" white paper and watercolors (the more experimentation with medium, the better!) As in the book we read, we decided it just needed a little somethin' extra...so just as Cézanne did, we added a nice big vase of flowers. Materials Needed:
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Sam PlaschElementary Art Teacher Archives
May 2018
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