Oil Pastel Cityscapes

I'm so excited about this current project! I believe I got the ides off of Pinterest (that's where all the good ideas come from these days, right?) We are doing a simple cityscape using a sharpie and oil pastels. My kids have never used oil pastels before, so I was a little nervous about turning my K loose with them. However, they did an amazing job! We started out just with a sharpie marker. I instructed them to draw an arrow and make sure the line goes all the way to the bottom of the page. Then we finished the "building" by drawing two more lines down to the bottom from the outside of the slanted arrow lines. We then added several circles for the sky. My kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd are all doing this lesson. We also discussed cool colors and warm colors and then we used the cool colors on the buildings and the warm colors in the sky!

Keith Haring

While the lower elementary grades were doing Giraffes Can't Dance, my upper elementary grades began an artist study on Keith Haring. Haring is my artist of the month for January, and I also doing artist studies with my kids. This was a two week lesson and the kids loved it! I displayed every 3rd and 4th graders work! 

Giraffes Can't Dance

Right after Christmas break, my Kindergarten, 1st Grade, and 2nd Grade started working on dancing giraffes. I read them the book Giraffes Can't Dance, and they loved it! We spent the first day working on how to draw a giraffe using basic shapes and the next week they drew their dancing giraffes on their own. They then used crayons to color. Here are a few below!

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

I found this on Pinterest and cannot wait to show it to my classes!

Winter Snowmen

We have been painting ornaments for the Christmas tree in the lobby at school (Photos of that to come soon!) and I wanted something festive to put on my bulletin board, too. I decided to have all grades paint a winter scene with a snowman. I'm amazed at how great they turned out! We used watercolor for the background and acrylic for the snowmen. I even let them enhance the snow with some silver! They will still be up during the Christmas programs at school so make sure you check them out! Here's a sneak peak below...

Love the hats and scarves and how she did 3 snowmen!

This girl is SO artistic! She won the FirstBank Christmas Card design contest this year!

(Check out the Tennessee "T"!)

Fantastic background color!

Love the composition of these 2!

Yes, this is my little boy's. Yes, I put it on the board. 

Forgive me. He's in Kindergarten!

Amazing job for small snowmen. Love them.

Great job on the Santa hat, Lane!

Here lately...

We have been completing lots of fun projects here lately! We had parent teacher conference in early October. I made a list of all the projects we have completed so far for any parent that stopped by. I also let the parents look at their child's portfolio! Here's a shot of my whiteboard door (my board!)

When I found out my new iPhone update had a panorama view picture option... I couldn't wait to try it out with my classes! We made some fun pumpkins with faces for a Halloween project in my lower elementary grades. They turned out super cute!

For November, Mona Lisa is dressed up as an Indian! She looks super cute! :)

My lower elementary grades are discussing feelings and colors. I read them this book! They loved it! We then talked about what feelings are associated with what colors and they all showed me different faces for different feelings. I then had them draw 4 different face feelings using a color that they would associate with that feeling. They turned out great! The following are from Kindergarten and 1st Grade.

My upper elementary grades are working on a very cool lesson that I found over at Thomas Elementary Art Blog called Brain Machines. I used it for my first formal observation, and it went over VERY well! We discussed the 6 simple machines and the artist Rube Goldberg. We then talked about brain functions that happen in your head daily (sneezing, coughing, opening eyes, yawning, etc). They have to take 3 of the 6 simple machines and have a brain function that goes along with the machine. I'm tracing their silhouette and they will draw a machine inside their silhouette. It's going to be awesome when we get finished! Photos to come asap!

Leaf Prints

The 4th graders were getting tired of their weavings and were begging me to paint since all the other grades have been painting. I let them and the students in the lower grades who were already finished with their Kandinsky circles do some prints with leaves. The leaves have been falling so I thought... why not! They LOVED it! Some of them turned out really great! The kids love painting and this was just an extra painting project they got to complete.