Artistic Freedom

I wanted to do a lesson that introduced the kindergarten to color mixing. It was weeks before spring and I thought that we could do spring flowers. It was a great ideas till I thought about how my kindergartens were going to paint the intricate nature of a flower. We broke the drawings down into shapes and drew each flower as a class. The next class, we painted the blue sky making sure we go around the flowers and grown leaving them white (The blue makes the flowers look like they are under water with it being straight dark blue, but it adds to the playfulness of kindergarten). The following class the students painted the green stems and grass with the green they mixed from blue and yellow. Each class we talked about what colors were needed to create each secondary color. When the students came up to get paint I would ask them what color they were making and what colors were needed to make that secondary color. The last class the students painted the flowers purple and oran...

Love the way this group covers the Gotye song. LOVE the fact that they are all playing off the same guitar. I showed my fifth graders the video while they were weaving and they asked me to play it again. The group has other covers they do in case you enjoy this one.

All these Leprechaun traps were built at home and set to trap a leprechaun in their classroom. I wanted to take a picture of every one (didn't have enough time). The creativity and time spent building with parents was amazing to me. I thought it earned a posting on the blog. How great are these? Leprechauns were on the students minds today... Any free time, the students work in their sketchbooks. The students were all drawing rainbows and leprechauns. I love their excitement! Might not look like a leprechaun footprint to you, but to my kindergartners it's a mark left by a "sneaky" leprechaun. I though it looked like a NIKE... but I took the picture and joined in on their excitement. All the kindergarten classes at both of my elementary schools were leprechaun CRAZY! I must say that I am blessed to be part of two great schools with such great enthusiastic Kindergarten and first grade teachers. The time they spend making this day memorable and all about the students is ...

2nd Grade Alien Collographs 1st Grade Color Mixing (Secondary Colors) Fish 3rd Grade Weaving I haven't posted any lesson in a while, so I wanted to show everyone what my students have been working on. The lessons will be finished soon and posted individually soon after. Enjoy the pictures above. The kids are working hard and doing a great job!

Step 1: place broken and pealed crayons in an old cupcake tin. Set oven to 300 degrees and watch them melt. Step 2: When crayons are fully melted, take them out of the oven and let them cool. When cooled... take a knife and push it down one side as if to let air under the crayon cake. The cake will pop out. Step 3: Enjoy!!!! Crayon Cakes are g reat for the younger ages when they do crayon rubbings. The crayon cake shape is great for a young child's hands. I will be using them in an upcoming lesson. The students love the fact that they rub the crayon cake and it rubs one color, then all of a sudden it rubs two different colors. I made warm and cool colored crayon cakes in this batch. I have a couple other batches of just random colors (the students really like these ones). If you are one of the many art teachers that use and make their own crayon cakes, let me know if you do anything different when making them. If you don't use them.... TRY THEM!

If I haven't said it enough... I LOVE MY JOB! All the teachers came together this week for Dr. Seuss week, the week ended with a door decorating contest with every door receiving a prize. It was a great week, the students had fun and found another positive reason to enjoy reading. I love working at the elementary level!!!!

I picked the book "The Shape of Me and Other Stuff" By Dr. Seuss for inspiration for my door decoration. I had my students cut out the boy and girl, the facet, and the umbrella. All of my classes learned about silhouettes this week as we read this book. My kindergarten made silhouettes of flowers (shown on the bottom of the door), my first grade made food silhouettes (shown on the upper half of the door), and my second grade made every day object silhouettes that will be added to the door later this week. As the art teacher, I feel a kind of pressure with a contest like this... we will have to wait for the results. I will be posting the other doors around the school as the week continues...

This lesson started with me talking to the students about what they wear in the winter and why they wear it. After we made a list of clothing items worn during the winter, I had the students draw themselves wearing clothing from the list. After the students finished their "stick figures" I introduced them to Self- Portraiture. We looked at examples from other artist and I brought in some examples of my own work. The students were very excited to start their own drawings. I gave each student a oval tracer for the head and that was it. As a class, we drew the face piece by piece together as a class so that we were able to talk about the facial measurements and scale. The students drawings turned out amazing (as I showed earlier). The next class we talked about skin color and the students brought in their own winter hats. They colored in their hats and skin with crayon. Future classes included coloring in the rest of their self-portrait, white crayon snow flakes, and wax resist ...

Struggled finding ways to hang the fish... My girlfriend had the great idea of hanging them. THANK YOU for the great idea!! She put up with a crabby boyfriend, and an apartment that smelt like sharpie marker for over a week. Thanks again MAgs! Cardboard + X-Acto Knife = Long frustrating nights After a week of late nights and a new dislike for cardboard, I finished my Dr. Seuss Character decorations for the hallway of my elementary school. I joined my first school committee... Seuss Week! As the art teacher, I was given the decorations job. The decorations were put up Thursday after school (night before Dr. Seuss's birthday), the students walked in the next day and were extremely excited. All the hard work is worth it when you get a reaction so positive... I love my JOB! Each year I will be adding more characters... please let me know your favorite Dr. Seuss book and character for next years ideas.