Castles with Pen and Watercolor-- 5th/6th grade

 

5^th/6^th grade Castle Drawings

The 5^th and 6^th graders have been studying the Medieval time period in their Social Studies class.  For this project, the 5^th and 6^th graders looked at pictures of castles and drew their own castle using pencil and pens.  Then, they added watercolor washes to the picture. 

Some of the students discovered that it looks really nice when the castle is left white.

Art Show

We had our Youth Art Month regional art show at the mall this week.  The reception was yesterday.  The judges pick one artwork from each teacher to go on to the state art show at the capitol building, which will be held during the actual Youth Art Month (March).  Here are my students' artworks:

Penguins in the Snow-- Kindergarten and NAEA convention

Hello!  Can you believe there's only 3 days left until the National Art Education Conference in New York?  woo hoo!  Each day I am planning to give a short update in pictures and words recapping what I did all day.  I know I will be so super busy though, so we'll see if that actually happens!   Today is also our regional art show, so I will have pictures of that to show you later.

The kindergarten class studied penguins in their classroom and I thought a painting project would be a fun tie-in.  This was a project that I saw on Artsonia.  On the first day, we drew and painted the black penguin.  On the second day, they added white acrylic paint on top of the penguin and to show snow in the sky.  Eyes and hats were cut from construction paper.

Chinese Calligraphy-- 3rd grade

The 3rd graders have been learning about China in their social studies class.  They practiced brush painting with Chinese calligraphy brushes.  These were made into a little accordian book.  Watercolor painted covers were glued on to the front and back.

Winter Landscapes

2^nd Grade Winter Landscapes

For this project, we read a book about Grandma Moses: 

Grandma Moses (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

We discussed how to draw a river or road showing depth (by drawing it converging to a point in the distance).  We talked about using size variation to show distance while drawing houses and other objects. 

The students cut out mountains from gray paper and a snowy patch from white paper (I walked them through this step-by-step).  Houses were cut from construction paper and details were added with crayons.  Trees and snow were painted with watercolor cakes. 

Arctic Animals

The 1st graders studied the Arctic in their Language Arts/Social Studies class.  In Art class, they chose an animal from the Arctic to depict in a print.  They made impressions on styrofoam printing plates using regular pencils. Then, they inked the plates using a brayer and printing ink.  These lovely prints are the result!

Tips:  Set up printing stations and watch a small group print at a time.  The other kids can work on a drawing while some are printing.  Use ink retarder to slow drying time.  

Snippets of Art

Another collaborative artwork.. by 4th/5th graders

And the last collaborative artwork, also by 4th/5th graders

A very cool dish made by a 4th grader

This page contains 8,000 stick people.  Well, I didn't count them, but that's what the student said.  They are drawn on both sides.  A 6th grader brought this in to show me, isn't it cool?

front page of stick people.. Each block is 100 people. 

close up of stick people groups

back page of stick people

Value Scale

I made a Value Scale worksheet for an upcoming project.  Use it if you'd like!
I use this for kids in grade 3-4.


Tell me if you have trouble downloading it.  This is the first time I've embedded a pdf.

DOWNLOAD FILE

Value Scale

Art Teacher Meme

I had just posted a blog entry about how we should make an art teacher meme... and one of my friends JUST uploaded one on facebook!   Awesome!

Map of My Heart-- Kindergarten

The kindergartners made Maps of their Hearts!  They included things that were important in their lives.  We drew with permanent markers first, then watercolor painted them in.. 

I got this idea from the book "Playful Learning" which would be a great book for a classroom teacher.  It was interesting to read, but most of the activities are math, science, reading related.

Third and Fourth grade collaborative circle paintings

I was so excited to see this idea of Circle Painting!!   I first learned about it at Barbara's Thought of the Day and then at We Heart Art.  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for this wonderful idea.  We are making several collaborative canvases with this technique and they are going to be raffled off at our end of the year school FUNdraiser.  The kids had a blast creating these paintings.  This is the first video I have edited using Imovie!  I'm planning on making two more canvases with an older class to keep at school for display.

After School Art Class-- Finished Projects

This week, the after school art class kids added marker and doodling to their spray painted pictures.

They also finished their abstract paintings!  Here are a few examples: