It's that time AGAIN!!

Well hello Blog World! I am back.. it has been quite a long time. I apologize for my long absence. My husband and I bought a house and this summer has been dedicated to making it "ours" by adding our little touches. One thing that has been amazing is our Garden! Since it's new to us, every week I walk out or take a look out into the many (MANY) gardens and I see something new blooming, it's just beautiful.
I think this school year we are going to have a lot more nature themed projects because I am so inspired.

We started school last monday! We are working on our folders and doing introduction and reviews! Can't wait til Thursday for the 2nd cycle to begin so we can really start out main content lesson projects.


Kindergarten: Primary Shape Mobile
1st Grade: Realistic Owls focusing on texture- Black paper/construction paper crayons
3rd Grade: Barn/Farm Landscape- focusing on Patterns/Foreground/ Middle Ground/ Background/Form
4th Grade- Optical Illusion Hands

This year I would like to post every week. If you notice that I am not and your curious about a lesson/procedure/idea. Let me know!

Have a great day and Happy Art Making! :)

Kindergarten Muddy Pigs

This is one of my favorite projects to do with Kindergarten. I usually do this project to introduce/review basic shapes, and how to make shapes to create an animal.

I use 9" x 12" white construction paper.  We usually read a story and/or discuss information about pigs.
We draw in pencil and outline with medium Sharpie Markers. YES, I said Sharpie Markers with KINDERGARTENS.
I feel with great explanation and expectations, I usually do NOT have a problem with misuse of the Sharpies. Sometimes we use Black Crayola Markers to outline.

They use crayons to color in and then to finish the projects they use brown tissue paper to add more "mud" to their pigs. They can crumble the tissue paper or keep the tissue flat.

I love all the personalities and how all the environment have a little different interpretation.

One-Point Perspective Barn and Pumpkin Patches

(4th grade student work, love the colors and details, esp. the windmill in the background and sheep)

This project was completed by my fourth grade students in October. I originally found this idea on pinterest, here and wanted to add the (3-Dimensional) barn for my students to have experience drawing  a one-point perspective building. I like to look for ideas online for good lessons, but I always like to "tweek" them to make them my own and for my students particular lessons.

To start out we used 11" x 17" white construction paper. We drew a horizontal line near the top of the page. They added a dot in the middle of the line, this would be their "one-point" where all the lines point to. We added 3-4 lines to make the Pumpkin Patch rows. They added pumpkins to their patches, trying to make the lines "realistic" so the pumpkins would look rounded. Some student chose to make them into Jack O' Lanterns. 

For the Barn, They drew a vertical rectangle added half a circle for the front of the roof. They use rulers, lined them up to the dot to make the side of the barn, lines. 

Last but not least we added a dark blue, black, or purple watercolor wash over the crayons. 

 

(love the haunted farm look, it was around Halloween, must have been on their minds :) )

 

They turned out great.