DIY- During the Summer

Hey all:

Although I had good intentions of blogging over the summer, sadly that just did not happen. But since the beginning of the school year is upon us, I have become motivated to pick up the habit again. I thought for my first post, I would share some of the DIY projects that I have worked on over the summer!

The first thing I tackled, was a house-warming present for my little brother who has just moved into his first apartment! So cute! He works at a local zoo and he loves everything having to do with animals. One of his favorite animals is a red panda, so I painted him a picture of a red panda for his wall using oil paints and a palette knife.

I also have started making an apron for my classroom. I'm following Cassie Stephens and her Apron-Sew-Along. Her directions are awesome and she's quite humorous. Here is the material that I picked out.

I only have one side and the pocket done, however eventually it will have a neck and waist tie and some borders, along with a backing to keep the mess that is sure to get on it from bleeding through onto my clothes!

My last project of the summer involves a new classroom! That's right folks, I'm at a new school this year! Still teaching elementary art, but I had the challenge of reorganizing a new room and making it ready for the new year. Not to mention planning for a new curriculum and getting to know new staff and procedures. Here are the before pictures of my room:

After several days of very hard work, here's how it looks now!

This is the entrance as you come in.

This is the free-create station for early finishers

The front of the room, complete with Smart Board. Also notice the Artist's Word Wall on the grey cabinet.

To the left of the Smart Board is a bulletin board with the class room jobs, Star Chart for behavior, and an area for writing down 'I Can' statements for each class. I also made a book nook for reading and playing art games after work is done.

I moved my desk to the back of the room and beside it are all the shelves for students work.

Lastly, the room is shaped like an upside down 'L', so in the corner is the drying rack, sink, one of the store rooms, and a table for working with clay and prepping materials.

So now I"m all ready for the school year. My next post will hopefully be next week. I will want to share the first projects that my new students start!

Art Show is Finally Done!

We finally have all the art work hung up for next week's art show! No wall was left undecorated and no bulletin board was left blank! It took forever and I'm sure I'm going to be rehanging art work all week and as it gets pulled down, but it looks wonderful! Here are some pictures :)

Messy Art Projects are the Best!

In my opinion, students aren't allowed to be messy anymore. I think that half the fun of art is getting to really touch and feel and play and get messy! So we have been playing and getting messy in three different grades during the last couple of weeks!

In first grade we spent some time learning about Jackson Pollock and how he basically started his own type of painting called 'action painting'. Then we spent time painting like Jackson Pollock! It was great! We used eye droppers and big movements to splatter the paint all over our paper. Students had a great time with the freedom of painting like Jackson Pollock.

The second grade students are in the middle of a project that is turning trash into treasure. We are using cardboard from cereal boxes and Pringles cans to create an airplane. We spent time learning about the different parts of the plane and sketching out what we wanted our planes to look like. Then students cutout the shapes they needed and taped them onto the Pringle can to create their plane. In the last class, we used papier mache to cover our entire airplanes. It was a mess, but it was awesome and the kids loved how tactile it was.

The third grade is also making a mess using clay. Students learned all about classical architecture and the different orders. Then they chose a building to do a simplified sketch of and then create in clay. They did an awesome job and now we're glazing them!

1st Grade Lizard Sculptures

Whenever I get a chance to make three dimensional art with the kids and it's not clay, I get excited! I originally saw this project here, but I've also seen it in many other places on the internet and I have wanted to try it for awhile. Well we finally did it and then turned out great! The 1st grade students all made these stunning lizard sculptures!

On the first day we did some talking about lizards. The students shared what they already knew and then I had a power point presentation to talk to the kids about lizards and their habitats and what they eat etc... then each student got a piece of construction paper and decorated the whole thing with lines and shapes and patterns.

 When we picked back up again, the students had time to finish decorating their paper and then we went through step by step how to fold the paper so that each lizard had the right creases for cutting later. It took the whole class, because students really needed help with some of the folding.

On the last day, we cut our lizard papers to create a triangle for taping together. Before taping though the kids had to cut slits in the back of the lizard. These slits will give it the slinky lizard-like effect that they are looking for. Then we taped them together and the students had the rest of the class to cut out arms, legs, a head, and tongue and decorate as they saw fit. What I love is how awesome they all look hanging up, just like real lizards crawling around on the walls!

Continuing Figure Drawing with Kindergarten

As our kindergarten students continue to study the human figure, we have moved on from simply drawing the figure, or constructing the figure using different materials. First we turned one of our drawings into a white outline on black paper and then we added macaroni to it to experiment with a different way of creating a figure drawing. This also helped with student's fine motor skills.
After each student had drawn their figure, I came around with a bottle of glue and outlined it. Then students went to town gluing on those little pasta bits.

After we finished this project, we moved onto making a figure sculpture. Students followed step by step instructions to make a little man (or lady) out of pipe cleaners. They did pretty well attaching and twisting the pieces. This took them the whole class however, and when they were done we marked the sculpture with tape and their name since they all looked alike.

During the second class, the kids covered the pipe cleaner 'armature' with tin foil to make their sculpture look like metal. We talked about wrapping and then crunching together the tin foil to make sure it stayed in place. Again this helped with developing our student's fine motor skills.

After the students were finished, we affixed their sculptures to a piece of colored construction paper. I think they turned out fun and whimsical!