Monday, December 27, 2010
3rd Grade Torn Paper Landscapes
The third graders did an excellent job with learning about landscapes. The students learned the parts of a landscape- foreground, middleground, background, and sky- and used torn paper to illustrate the different parts. The details were then added using oil pastels. Check our the results. More can be found on our artsonia page.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Ho Ho Ho Fashion!
A really playful way to teach horizontal/ vertical lines and primary colors is this lesson I recently did with my 1st graders. I showed the students a brief slide show on the paintings of Mondrian as well as a website that showed examples of his paintings that influenced fashion- dresses, ties, jackets, and shirts. So then I told them that we were going to design a new hat for Santa using Mondrian as our influence.
The students used a tracer to create the cut shape of a santa hat. Following cutting out their hat, the students had to create their design using vertical lines, horizontal lines, and primary colors. Each student used a white, a blue, and a yellow oil pastel to create the colors, as well as a black sharpie and a ruler to create the pattern of lines.
The kiddos really love doing this because it has to do the Santa! You could have students of other levels create other articles of clothing in the form of fashion designs. A friend of mine also suggested that you could create Santa hats inspired by all a variety of different artists paintings.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
This is why I do what I do...
Today I brought 43- 4th grade students to the Frist Center in downtown Nashville. Now some background information on my students....
Shwab Elementary is what you would call a neighborhood school. Nearly all the students live close enough to walk to school, we only have one school bus that few students ride. Many of the kids haven't ever been out of the neighborhood. The Frist is less than 15 minutes away from the school and as one of the other teachers put it, taking our students downtown is as equally exciting as if we were to bring them to NYC! And it was! The students were OOOoooing and AAhhhing all throughout the drive to the museum.
At the beginning of the school year, students have been studying and creating their very own Dale Chihuly artworks. I can't think of anything more thrilling for the students then to see the Chihuly artworks in person! Needless to say it was an incredible gift that I was able to arrange for my students, and they gave me the gift of smiles, thank yous, and hugs.
Even better was hearing from the other chaperones about the students reaction to the Birth of Impressionism. During the tour, my students were making comments like "Ms. Motta showed us that," "that's a landscape, "that's a portrait," "that's a still life." I was very proud to hear that they were also asking great questions and were very respectful of the docents who were leading the tours. Of course I heard that the boys giggled at the nude paintings that were hanging that they walked passed, but I mean they are after all only 4th graders!
Upstairs felt magical. I have viewed this particular Dale Chihuly exhibit somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen times myself, but being with groups of my students who have focused so much on him, viewing it for the first time- was almost like seeing it for the first time again for me too! The students were amazed at how the "drawings" by Chihuly appeared to still be wet, the size of the Macchia, and were excited to sketch from the Ikebana. What cracked me up though, was their amazement at the Hotshop video, even though they had already viewed it a month ago! I have a feeling that I may have to show the students the video again now that they have seen the work in person.
All and all, the bad kids of Shwab Elementary turned out to have a good side, and they all made me a very proud teacher today! Today was the best day since I started there, and I really truly loved every minute of my job today! One of my students said today, after hearing that I am going to Chihuly's studio during this coming NAEA conference, that he wanted to be me. - I certainly love being an art teacher!
Shwab Elementary is what you would call a neighborhood school. Nearly all the students live close enough to walk to school, we only have one school bus that few students ride. Many of the kids haven't ever been out of the neighborhood. The Frist is less than 15 minutes away from the school and as one of the other teachers put it, taking our students downtown is as equally exciting as if we were to bring them to NYC! And it was! The students were OOOoooing and AAhhhing all throughout the drive to the museum.
At the beginning of the school year, students have been studying and creating their very own Dale Chihuly artworks. I can't think of anything more thrilling for the students then to see the Chihuly artworks in person! Needless to say it was an incredible gift that I was able to arrange for my students, and they gave me the gift of smiles, thank yous, and hugs.
Even better was hearing from the other chaperones about the students reaction to the Birth of Impressionism. During the tour, my students were making comments like "Ms. Motta showed us that," "that's a landscape, "that's a portrait," "that's a still life." I was very proud to hear that they were also asking great questions and were very respectful of the docents who were leading the tours. Of course I heard that the boys giggled at the nude paintings that were hanging that they walked passed, but I mean they are after all only 4th graders!
Upstairs felt magical. I have viewed this particular Dale Chihuly exhibit somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen times myself, but being with groups of my students who have focused so much on him, viewing it for the first time- was almost like seeing it for the first time again for me too! The students were amazed at how the "drawings" by Chihuly appeared to still be wet, the size of the Macchia, and were excited to sketch from the Ikebana. What cracked me up though, was their amazement at the Hotshop video, even though they had already viewed it a month ago! I have a feeling that I may have to show the students the video again now that they have seen the work in person.
All and all, the bad kids of Shwab Elementary turned out to have a good side, and they all made me a very proud teacher today! Today was the best day since I started there, and I really truly loved every minute of my job today! One of my students said today, after hearing that I am going to Chihuly's studio during this coming NAEA conference, that he wanted to be me. - I certainly love being an art teacher!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Bad Case of Stripes
Recently when trying to come up with a portrait lesson for my first graders I stumbled upon my friend Crystal's blog and found this fabulous lesson...
http://mrsjahnig.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20Bad%20Case%20of%20Stripes
I made a few alterations to the lesson. Rather than having a fully colored background much like the face full of stripes, I had the students cut out their portraits once they were completely colored with crayon, and paste them onto a colored piece of construction paper. On that construction paper students were given a sharpie to complete their art work by applying more stripes and patterns within those stripes. These turned out very cool! Both myself and the kiddos were pleased with the results!
http://mrsjahnig.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20Bad%20Case%20of%20Stripes
I made a few alterations to the lesson. Rather than having a fully colored background much like the face full of stripes, I had the students cut out their portraits once they were completely colored with crayon, and paste them onto a colored piece of construction paper. On that construction paper students were given a sharpie to complete their art work by applying more stripes and patterns within those stripes. These turned out very cool! Both myself and the kiddos were pleased with the results!
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
MNPS Chihuly Blog
If you are interested in seeing what is happening in Nashville Schools in conjunction with the Chihuly exhibits here please visit http://mnpschihulyartlessons.blogspot.com/ I just posted to it this evening!
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Above are 1st and 2nd grade students drawing of ikebana using sharpie that was then covered with tissue paper and mod podge. The combination loosely resembles stained glass when hung in the window.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
3rd and 4th Grade Self Portraits
The first several weeks of school I spent teaching the 3rd and 4th graders how to measure proportions of their facial features in order to create a self portrait. It was a hard lesson for both myself and the students when once we were through with the drawing, the painting of the portraits was rushed and completely covered the drawings. The fourth graders used a monochromatic color scheme with using the complementary color for the background, and the third graders used primary colors- working with tempra cakes. Third grade was also encouraged to keep the colors seperate. Below are a few really great examples.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Embedding Power Points using Slideshare
I am currently sitting in a workshop on google docs and thought because that blogger is run through google that I could paste or upload directly from google docs. This is NOT so. My wicked awesome instructor Tisch said, take this time to play and figure out what will benefit you. So I did and this is what I found!!!
Upload your power point from your computer directly OR from google documents into a Slide Share account. Copy the embed code from the slideshare website once your power point is there and paste it DIRECTLY into the body of the text of your blogger post. This will then display the slide presentation just as it is currently displayed on my page. The power point above is not one that I created- but found through a google search. This was WAY simplier than I expected it would be. :)
Upload your power point from your computer directly OR from google documents into a Slide Share account. Copy the embed code from the slideshare website once your power point is there and paste it DIRECTLY into the body of the text of your blogger post. This will then display the slide presentation just as it is currently displayed on my page. The power point above is not one that I created- but found through a google search. This was WAY simplier than I expected it would be. :)
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