Artistic Freedom

These are the first of my year 4 Mondrian Square projects. I will be adding a bunch more pictures, but I was excited to show you some changes made this year. This year I wanted to get away from the rectangle frame... nothing like a stack of tea cups. More pictures to come!

I built our very own Little Free Library! As a teacher, I felt it was my duty to reintroduce the excitement of reading books (with actual paper pages) to the children and adults in our neighborhood. Other than the cedar on the roof, my fiancé and I repurposed everything else to build the library. After all is said and done... the library gets hit three to four times a day. Take that video games!!!!

This is my attempt at Cézanne apples with a Matisse painted background done by my first graders. We stared with a oval tracer (helps with scale) to make the apples. I didn't care where they put the first circle, but by the third apple the students had to overlap one of the other apples already drawn. After the apples were drawn and the stems were added, we drew the horizon line in the background. The next couple classes were spent painting the background using the colors orange, blue, purple, and  yellow (they could choose where to put the colors). The students ended the painting with choosing green or red for the apple color. We added the apple and horizon line outline, and were finally finished. Great job 1st graders!!!!

ARTWORK!!!! Artist of The Month board. Storage!!!!!!!!! My large wood shelf for cereal box sketchbooks My college books, Personal library. Reading center. I am working with the library to have a second option for students when they finish an art project early. Read or Sketchbooks. The books on the shelf will rotate every two months. The books are "art" related or award winning illustrations.  This summer I spent some time moving three art classrooms into one. I am blessed to not only work in a building that wants me, respects me, and appreciates me... I work in a district that does the same. After some retirements, I moved into the main art room at the elementary I have worked part time in the last three years. I am spoiled, the room as you see is probably the third largest room in the school next to the gym and library. I am still going through things and making it my own, but after two months I have what you see above...

My kindergardeners ended the school year with these pointillist flowers. The students started with a circle in the middle of the paper or in a corner. After they drew the circle they used pointed oval tracers to create the overlapping pedals. They had to pick two colors and do one color dots in the center circle. The other color was used to make dots in the pedals. After the dots were made with crayon we used water color to fill in the spaces. The end result is as shown above. Great job Kindergarden! 

  A students view of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Students looked at the colors Van Gogh used and added those same colors on their drawn flowers. 1st Graders working on their flowers… Class 5 (last day) On the first day of the project, I introduced the students to Vincent Van Gogh and his sunflower paintings. We looked at the painting shown above, and drew the flowers with pencil on black paper as a class. I made three different sized circle tracers for each student to use to help with proportions. The students drew a horizon line to start. We placed the vase bottom below the horizon line and then placed each flower on the paper… one circle at a time. The next class we talked about color. We counted the colors used in just the vase. The students started on the vase, and used every color that they saw on the painting. We did the same thing the next class with the pedals and flower centers. The students loved working with the oil pastels. I think...