Beginning of the Year Self Portraits

 It's the beginning of the school year, and my students have spent the last two art classes drawing self portraits.  For this assignment, I mostly wanted to gauge their abilities, so I gave student the freedom to draw their portrait either realistic or cartoonish.
 Considering that I gave the students little guidance on how to draw a person, I feel my students did an amazing job!  My plan is to do another self portrait at the end of the school year, so we can compare their growth.

 I think these turned out wonderful!

New School Year, New School

The school year starts tomorrow and I am at two new schools this year. I am so excited to meet my new students, and start the new year! Here is a photo of one of my schools.  I am on a cart at my other school.

I can't wait to post my students' wonderful artwork as the year progresses!

Reflections, 3rd Grade

I have done this lesson many times, and my students always LOVE it.  From an art standpoint this lesson can teach about landscapes, reflections, and basic printing.  From a math standpoint this lesson incorporates the concept of flips which is also referred to as reflections.  I love when art lessons cross into other subjects!  

This is very simple to complete.  All you need to do is have students draw and color a landscape on the top half of their paper with washable markers (You can also use liquid watercolor paint if you want).  Then just spray the bottom half of the paper with water, fold, and rub.   I think the results were wonderful! 

One Point Perspective, 4th and 5th Grade.

Believe it or not, after 10 years of teaching, this was my first time teaching one point perspective to my students.  Until I saw this simple lesson on the blog Elementary Art is Fun, I have always been intimidated to teach one point perspective to young children. This lesson breaks one point perspective into simple, easy to understand steps.

While students did struggle a little with understanding one point perspective, with a little guidance, they did a great job!

Styrofoam Prints, 3rd Grade

I love printmaking lessons, and this year I decided to try styrofoam printing with my 3rd graders. This year I managed to get a hold of four printing brayers and printing ink, which was exciting for us.  It has been a few years since I have been able to teach styrofoam printing. 

 To begin this lesson, we looked at Adrinka Cloths from Ghana.  Students used this as their inspiration for their designs.  Students then carved into Styrofoam to create their designs, and printed them four times.

These turned out great! and the students loved the printing process!

Notans, 4th and 5th Grade

My 4th and 5th graders created Notions.  Notan is a Japanese word for the interactions between dark and light.  Traditionally Notans use a black square piece of paper, which is then cut to create symmetrical images that play with the idea of positive and negative space.  It also ties perfectly into geometry, since Notans focus on reflections/flips.

Clay Faces, 5th Grade

In the last few weeks, I have been doing a variety of clay projects with my 3-5th graders.  My fifth graders finished their clay faces this week.

 Students created this in 2 (35 minute) art classes.  The first class, they created the clay face.  The second class, they painted it with tempera paint.  Unfortunately, I do not have enough glaze this year, but the tempera paint turned out nice anyway.

 I love the creativity in these!