Clay Cupcakes, 3rd Grade

My 3rd graders created these beautiful clay cupcakes.  Students used the pinch pot technique to create the top and bottom of their cupcakes.  The bottom of the cupcake was placed in a silicone cupcake mold to create the ridges, and look more realistic.  Details were added later.  It is important students score and slip all details, otherwise many pieces fall off.  

 After it was out of the kiln, we painted them with tempera paint.  These could also be glazed, but we chose to paint since glaze is expensive. To make them shiny, we added a layer of shiny acrylic on top. 

These are amazing!  This is one of my favorite assignments every year. 

Warm and Cool Color Hands, 3rd Grade

This is an oldie, but a goodie.  I have been teaching this lesson for years.  I did not create this lesson myself.  I have seen it on numerous sites, so I am not sure who originally created this lesson idea.  If this is your lesson, let me know, I would love to give you credit. 

This lesson is about practicing patterns and warm and cool colors.  Students draw a pattern for their background first.  After this, students are asked to use either all warm or all cool colors for the background.  Then the hand is colored with the opposite. This lesson is simple, it looks amazing, and student's love it!

Clay Cupcakes, 3rd Grade

My school has been doing clay for weeks now.  These are the clay cupcakes made by my third graders.  Students used the pinch pot method to create the top and bottom of the cupcake.  Students also used a silicone cupcake liner to create a realistic look to the bottom of the cupcake.  Instead of glaze, they used tempera paint to add color.  Overall, these were a huge success! 

Winter Paintings, 3rd Grade

 Right before Christmas break, I had my third graders create winter landscapes.  The goal of this assignment was to teach color mixing.  I showed students how to create tints with their paint.  This is how we created the sky.

 The landscape was painted with black and white to create a silhouette.  I allowed students to paint anything as long as it was a winter scene.  Of course, I ended up with a lot of Christmas themed ones, since we did these in December.

Yarn Weaving, 3rd Grade

 My third graders have been working on weaving for the last two months.  We began by learning paper weaving.  Then students moved on to weaving with yarn.

I have seen paper plate weaving done many times with elementary students, so I have no idea who initially came up with this idea.  However, I found really well written directions for this on Cassie Stephens blog.

Silhouette Houses, 3rd Grade

 Every year, around this time, I do a Silhouette House lesson with my students.  This year, I did it with third graders.  Many of my students choose to make their silhouette house scary, but students have the option to make any type of house.

The background is created with liquid watercolors, and the foreground painted with black tempera paint.

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!

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! 

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!

Clay Cupcakes, 3rd Grade

 My students finally painted their clay cupcakes.  We didn't have enough glaze this year, so we used tempera paint. I think the tempera paint turned out nice.

 These turned out very well considering we only had two (30 minute) classes to create and paint these beauties.

3rd Grade, Clay Cupcakes

 It's my favorite time of the year, clay time!  My 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders will be working on ceramic lessons for the next few weeks.  Here are clay cupcakes made by my 3rd graders.  This is what they look like right out of the kiln.  We will be painting this soon!  I do not have enough glaze this year, so we will be painting them and then adding a clear sealer on top.  I will post the final results, when they are finished.

 My students are so excited about these! I love them too!

Art Show!

 Here are some photos of our school wide art show.  Every students from PreK- 5th grade had one piece of artwork in the art show.  There were about 720 works of art on display.

This show doubled as a fundraiser. We used a company called Artome to frame the artwork.  It was really simple.  Basically, I sent artwork to Artome, which I labeled by student name, grade, and class.  They framed the artwork, and brought it the night of the show.  Artome even set the entire show up for me.  We sold the frames for $25 dollars a piece, and parents were able to take their child's framed artwork home that night.  After the show was over, Artome dismantled the entire show and mailed the unsold artwork back to the school about two weeks later.  Artome only charged us for the frames that were sold.

The art show turned out great, and we did end up raising a good amount of money for the school!  If you are looking for an simple way to do an art show for a large school, I would definitely recommend Artome.

County Art Show

Every year my county has a big art show and every school has a display. Here is my school's display for this year.

Jazz, 2nd and 3rd grade

 My 2nd and 3rd graders have recently been learning about how to show motion in art.  This lesson focused on jazz music.  Students listened to music, and then created a piece of art to show the movement of the music.

2nd graders created their Jazz artwork out of cut paper.

3rd graders created a painting.  

Both grades did a great job on this assignment!

Art Show

 This week the county is sponsoring an art show.  Every school in the county had two panels to hang artwork on, and it is displayed at a local mall.  Here are a few pictures from my school's art display.

Black History Month Art, 3rd Grade

 The public library contacted me a few months ago, and asked me to have my students create artwork for black history month.  This is what they created, and now it is on display at the library.

 I found the idea for this lesson at http://learn.michenerartmuseum.org/2011/02/an-over-and-above-lesson-for-students/.  I adapted the original lesson to fit a younger audience, and to fit the black history theme.

Students began by painting a self portrait on the top portion of their paper.  Students then had to choose a famous quote from an African American to display on the bottom of their paper. Overall, I  think these turned out wonderful!

School Starts Tomorrow

 School starts tomorrow, and my art room is ready.  This will be a busy school year because I will be teaching art full time as well as working on my thesis for my master's degree.  I will try to keep this blog updated as much as possible through this crazy busy school year.

In my school, I teach 6 classes a day for 35 minutes each.  I see a total of 30 different classes each week.  Keeping track of all my students is probably the biggest challenge of my job. Organization is the key to survival in my classroom.

 I did about four bulletin boards in our hallway this school year, and here is a picture of two of them.

In order to maintain order in my classroom, I utilize a voice level chart, and students earn "Art Dollars" for good behavior.  Four times a year students get to spend their art money on prizes.

Art Show 2015

This was our first Art Show.  I decided to turn our art show into a fundraiser.  We had a company called Artome frame the artwork, and we sold each frame for $25.

By using this company, the whole process was really easy.  I labeled the artwork, and sent it to Artome two weeks prior to the show.  They came on the day of the show with the framed artwork, and even hung the artwork for me.  At the end of the show they packed up any unsold frames, and will send the artwork back to me.  This was great because it made cleanup easy, and we are only charged for what is sold.  

 Other than the framed artwork, we also had sculptures up for everyone to see.  

 Here are our 4th grade paper mache ice cream cones.

 These flowers were made by my kindergarten and fifth graders.  They worked collaboratively on this.

The Totem Poles were made by my fifth graders.  Each student created one piece of the totem, and put them together to make a large totem pole.