Mural Painting

I was sooo lucky to have a group of students from Middle Tennessee State University come to work with my school for one week. The MTSU students created mosaics with my students and painted a mural. The theme of the mural was "The Joy of Education, Friendship, and Life". I love how it turned out.

5th Grade Landscapes

I am really pleased with the results of this lesson. Almost all students had a very nice finished project. This was my end of the year lesson that reviewed everything that students have learned in 5th grade. We worked with color, proportion, landscape, texture, foreground/middleground, background, and craftsmanship. Students chose a black and white photograph of a landscape, then had to recreate it using painted paper. They had to demonstrate use of complementary colors, proportion, craft, texture, and foreground/middleground/background. I love the results.

Tessellations

I have always been very afraid of tessellations, but now I realize that was just silly. I gave students a square, and had them cut a small shape out of the right side, then tape it on the left. Do the same thing with the top and bottom. Then watch them go! I had to guide a couple towards finding a shape, and we will just say that some kids had some crazy abstract shapes, but all in all, I was pleased with the results. Here are a few of my favorites.

Wayne Thiebaud, Again!

My wonderful student teacher Kelly did this cupcake collage with second graders last semester. They had a great time cutting and gluing, and some turned out really nice!

Kandinsky Kards

I cannot take credit for this lesson, it belongs to a practicum teacher that I had last semester, Lauren Goodwin. She led 4th grade through Kandinsky's work with a wonderful powerpoint, then gave them 5 in x 7 in watercolor paper, which she pre-taped. They chose their background color, then they started with the abstract lines and designs. She had a box with paper strips. One set of strips had numbers 1-5, while the other set had everything like circle, square, wavy line, ect. She had students draw strips out of the box, for example, 3 squares, then they drew this on their paper using Sharpie markers. This was so simple but a great activity that was enjoyed by all.

Ugly Jugs

So, again, my fabulous students teacher came through with another cool project. Sometimes I love having student teacher for the simple fact of their cool new ideas! She worked with 4th grade making ugly jugs. I did not know what ugly jugs were, although I have unintentionally made a couple in my life. They are an art form that African American slaves did in their free time. There are all kinds of pictures on Google, and even a few Powerpoints! 4th grade students made a pinch pot out of clay, then added features. The jugs had to include two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but it was up to the kids after that. The features could be enlarged or extra small. Once the jugs were fired, the students glazed them with Mayco crystallite glaze-fabulous stuff, if I do say so. I have had so many teachers comment on how pretty they are, and I have to tell them that they are really ugly jugs!

Silhouettes

3rd grade has been working on silhouettes. My student teacher marbled paper with 3rd graders first, and talked about silhouettes. We used photo paper, shaving cream, and liquid watercolors to marble, it was so much fun! The glossy paper works much better than matte, but either one will work just fine. We squirted Barbesol shaving cream, (One of the cheapest brands, it takes about 2 cans for a class of 20-23), on the tables. Students worked with a partner and used liquid watercolors to drip color all over the shaving cream. They used big plastic combs and combed through the shaving cream, not going through to the table. Then, place the photo paper on top, and gently press down. We used some old card board and scraped the extra shaving cream off. The results were really cool! Students worked on drawing a silhouette while the shaving cream was drying. Advise students to be careful when gluing, as the glue made kind of a mess on the watercolor if too much was used.