February in the art room

Kindergarten and first grade completed a project based on a book by Barney Saltzberg entitled, Arlo Needs Glasses.(have your student watch the linked video, I'm sure they will enjoy it.)  The book is a great read and is really interactive with many pop-up tabs and moving parts. In this lesson we focused on drawing dogs, tracing, cutting, coloring with markers,and gluing. It was also a first time experience for K and 1st to work with oil pastels and colored chalk pastels. Sorry if they came home messy, but most of them loved every second of it! They also learned that Art is messy and that is perfectly okay!



 

 

Second and third grade completed their "Starry Night" projects and those are now hanging up in the hallways. During Valentine's week we created heart prints with bent toilet paper rolls and tempera paint. Students chose what colors would work best together, they learned about printing and overlapping. I think they really enjoyed this one day project. So many of our projects in art class last for weeks due to time constraints, so it was nice to have a short project.

 

  




I received so many thoughtful words, treats, and notes from students on
February 14th! Thank you students!






Fourth and fifth grade completed their plaster bandage sculptures and have finished painting them. This sculpture lesson included a self-evaluation. Students learned about rubrics and self-evaluation. We discussed why it was important as an artist to be self-critical and reflective, a very difficult challenge most of the time. But as always, students were very skilled at self evaluation. The sculptures will be on display in the school within the next week or two.

Art Club- students are in the beginning stages of planning a stop motion video that they are working on as a group. The video will take weeks to create and should be completed by May. The video will be posted on You Tube and presented at the end of the year. During art club students also create individual projects, which they design themselves.

January in the Art Room!

Welcome to the world's longest blog post!  Shame on me...we have been so busy in the art room lately, that I have neglected to blog for the entire month of January. Well, I've decided...that now it's February 1st, I can get back into the habit of posting. There has been so much going on and the year is already half over.

Kindergarten and First grade students have done a few projects recently. Students created their own scratch paper. First coloring in an entire sheet of paper with waxy, bright colored crayons. Next, they painted over their colored paper with black tempera paint mixed with soap. Once the paint dried, students scratched a winter design into their paper. Students enjoyed this process and seemed to view it as "magic" yet again. I love when students are amazed at processes such as these.

   

 
 


They also have studied different types of lines, they enjoyed naming them; straight, curvy, thick, thin, zig-zag and so on. Kindergarten students painted different types of lines on colorful paper.
First grade students created dot-to-dot touch point line drawings. The goal for this project was for students to be able to create an abstract design using contour lines. They also studied patterns and tracing. I think these designs started to look like rings in the middle of a tree. Students enjoyed creating these crazy, colorful line designs.

Second and Third grade students have been studying Vincent Van Gogh. We spoke of Vincent's use of rough texture, and vivid colors. Modeling after Van Gogh's "Starry Night" students painted the night sky using cool colors and rough textures. They also learned about landscapes,silhouettes, background and foreground, and collage. Their Starry Night paintings were very successful and packed with great art learning opportunities.

 

Fourth Grade- fourth graders at Black Hawk are working on watercolor resist paintings of winter landscapes. We talked about how to use masking tape to create resist areas for watercolor. The students used tape to create birch trees and winter scenes. They really seemed to enjoy building trees with tape, instead of drawing them.

Fourth and Fifth Grade students completed their drawings and paintings of Burlington Landmarks for the Midwest One Bank student art show. Their will be more information to come about when the show will be displayed. Students did an excellent job teaching me about the community and the rich history and culture that exists in Burlington. I learned a lot about my new community through their eyes.

Fourth and Fifth grade students also created line drawings like first graders, but instead of painting their line drawings, they learned about value and shading with colored pencil. We spoke about creating depth while including different values and shades of colors. Students learned about how to apply pressure in different amounts when shading with pencils. More pictures when they are finished.

Fourth and Fifth grade students have also began a Sculpture Unit. We spoke about Terra Cotta Warriors, which have been in the media lately and on exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. We talked about sculptures on a large scale, as well as small, and the different materials which are used to create sculptures.

Students built 5 inch sculptures out of aluminum foil as the armature, and then covered them in plaster bandages (like the ones you get when you have a cast). After the armatures were completely covered in plaster bandages. Students painted them in any color they would like. The goal of this unit was to learn about the human figure, how sculptures are made, work with new materials, and learn about proportion. Students were very motivated by this unit and welcomed the change of working in three dimensions.

Art Club- On January 10,  a group of about twenty, 5th grade students from Grimes Elementary met for the very first Art Club that Grimes has had. We meet on Thursdays from 3:15 to 4:15. The meetings are self-directed. Students may choose to work on any project they would like or in a media that they have never worked with before. I introduce new projects to them, and students can decide if they wish to work on them or not. I think the students have enjoyed getting the extra time in the art room during the week. They never get enough time with the 30 minute class periods once per week! I wish I had the time to create an Art Club at all three schools, but it just isn't possible with my schedule. There will be more updates on the Grimes Art Club in the coming weeks. Students are very excited about a possible digital art project that they will work on together.

On Monday, February 4th- parents of Art Club members are invited to the Grimes PTO meeting at 6 pm in the cafeteria to see their students present what they have been working on in Art Club. We are calling it, "Art Show at PTO." Please plan to be there!