End of the Year Fun

The first graders painted murals to finish up the school year.  They painted shapes and then connected the shapes with lines.  Finally they painted in all the shapes.  The results are very colorful, stained glass looking pieces.  I am going to hang them up in the hall when the kids come back to school in August.  Thanks to Mrs. Brouwer and her Georgetown Elementary Art Blog for this great idea.

The third graders finished up the year by creating artwork inspired by Marc Chagall.  The students drew self-portraits and other images of important things from their lives.  Then we add lines and shapes for a stained glass look to mimic Chagall's style of working with stained glass.  

 And finally, the Kindergarteners finished up their unit on Celebrations by creating instruments.  We decorated cardboard tubes, filled them with beads, and added felt to the ends.  Get ready for some loud noise in your house if you have a Kindergarten student!

 Thanks so much to everyone for another great year!  I look forward to having students back again next year.  Best wishes to my 5th graders as they move on to the middle school next year.  Check back on the blog over the summer for updates about things I am learning through my Teacher Creativity Grant.  I will be doing some traveling through this grant program and will be connecting my traveling and learning experiences into the art curriculum next year.

Have a great summer!
Miss Back

Still Life Drawing and Observation Drawing

Cezanne still life painting
Courtesy of wikipaintings.org

The first graders looked at work by Cezanne this week.  Then they drew a still life of flowers and fruit that was set up in our classroom.  We emphasized looking at the forms of objects and shadows and various colors that we could observe.

2nd graders created observation drawings of Diego Rivera's Mother and Children painting.  Can you see the resemblance between the original and the children's sketches?

Diego Rivera painting courtesy of www.allposters.com

Lilac Drawing

Today the 1st graders continued working on observation drawing.  There are beautiful lilac bushes growing around our school, so I was able to cut some flowers and bring them inside for the students to draw.  They did a great job including lots of specific details.  We focused on only drawing what we could see.  After we finished drawing, we painted them with watercolors.  Here are the results from Mrs. Darnell's class:

Animals Inspired by Mexican Oaxacan Carvings

To finish the up the year, 4th graders have been learning about Mexican Oaxacan Animal carvings.  These woodcarvings are made from the copal tree.  The animal carvings are painted with bright, abstract colors and patterns.  After looking at and discussing examples of these Oaxacan carvings, the 4th graders created their own 2-D animals and painted them in the style of the Mexican carvings.  I love all the different variety of animals and designs that the students created.

Crazy Hats

The Kindergarteners have been making artwork that relates to celebrations.  What better way to celebrate the last month of school than by making crazy hats?!  They used lots of scraps paper and anything else I could find that needed to be cleaned out of the art closet.  They LOVED gluing and dangling all sorts of materials from their hats.  

 

 The fifth graders have been working on creating their own weavings using wooden looms.  Here are some of the finished pieces: