Monday, November 21, 2011

Artsy Fartsy Turkey Story

I have a few classes ahead of the rest due to some of my recent abscences, so I decided to make some fun turkey projects with my younger grades today. I always like to introduce the lesson with a book. My librarian, who is the best by the way... happened to hook me up with this story called A Plump and Perky Turkey.
This isn't your typical Thanksgiving story! In this book the towns people are searching for a turkey for their Thanksgiving meal when there aren't any turkey's to be found, they come up with a very creative plan! They host an art contest, a turkey art contest and hang posters in search for a turkey model! I won't tell you how it ends, but it is super cute!



Friday, November 18, 2011

El dia De los Muertos

 About 50% of my schools student population is hispanic, so this year I wanted to teach my students about the day of the dead! Second graders drew and painted a full figured skeleton or calaca, and completed them using oil pastels, sequins, and tissue paper. The third grade curriculum required for them to create a mask, so we made sugar skull paintings, again completed with oil pastels, sequins, and tissue paper. The results were pretty fabulous! Finally I had my fourth graders test their cutting skills while creating papel picado, cut paper banners. Unforunately I only could find one pattern for the papel picado lesson online. If you are reading this and know of other online reasources that provide more free templates please let me know, thanks! Enjoy :)






Tuesday, November 15, 2011

if only i had a smART board....

I am lucky enough to have a projector in my room! None- the- less this website would be way cooler if I had a smart board! So if you do I urge you to check this out and have your students play with this while you are learning color mixing. On this website you can help Curious George mix paint and fill in a pre-drawn picture. It is very cute and pretty handy!



http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/games/mix_and_paint/mix_and_paint.html

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Homemade Watercolors...

Simply take dried out markers and place them in cups of water over night. Enjoy your homemade liquid watercolors!


Pumpkin Patch by kindergarten!

This week our kindergarten, 1st grade, and pre-k students all visited a pumpkin patch for a field trip! Part of our MNPS curriculum is to teach our kindergarten kiddos landscape. So I read a fabulous story of "Pumpkin Town," which the students loved, and then taught them a step by step drawing lesson on creating their very own pumpkin patch. We started with a brown crayon in drawing a horizon line and a wooden fence on that line. We next made a "spooky tree" without any leaves. Next I had the students draw their pumpkins, inside the patch including squiggly green vines. Finally we ended with the white moon and yellow stars. The following class I had the students use my home-made watercolor paints to complete their artwork with a blue sky and a brown ground. The students loved this, and it is a festive way to teach landscape!




Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Still Wild about Warhol!

Probably the last Warhol project for a while, second grade completed an assignment similar to one I did at the Frist this summer. I had the students cut out their own flowers out of tissue paper, and I helped them with squirting water on them to make a print from the bleeding tissue. The next class the students used a sharpie to outline and draw details on the flowers. Finally we used a green and a black oil pastel to create the grass around the flowers, similar to that in Warhol's flowers. Below is one of the many examples I showed the students, and the rest are the students work. Of course you can find more in our artsonia gallery!