Wow... have I been busy... more than expected...
This is hard becoming a first year teacher again...
We have had a great start to the beginning of the year. A busy and demanding start, but a good one.
I have recently finished a bunch of projects...
Kinder started the year with practicing Lines and making Line drawing and paintings using Oil pastels and water colors. We also made some line relief sculptures using warm and cool colored papers. I loved doing this project, it was a great way to introduce the art room rules and expectations and to get students introduced to following instructions in the room.
Types of Lines Painting
Line Sculptures
1st Grade made Mondrian Inspired Butterflies. I really felt this was another great assignment, but I have things I really want to fix... I loved the primary colors and bright colors of the sky... but I don't think this was a good line activity. I think I might move this next year to a later spot and try to come up with another better line activity for my first graders. Although they loved getting to work with paint for their first project!
1st Grade also just finished a project on symmetry looking at the book "Where the Wild Things Are" and creating their own wild thing using cut paper. This was a task and a half. It drove me NUTS trying to do this... I know that next year I am using paint to start the process... this was too much for the first week. and I wish I had been able to focus more on details not just the process...
2nd Grade made large Bodies in the style of Keith Haring. I Really don't have any photos of these that I was happy with. The students LOVED doing the giant artworks.... I hated working with them and I am not terribly excited about how they turned out. I really wish I had focused more on lines and patterns than I did. I also wish I had made the artwork smaller... big bodies are too big. On the plus side the kids did have a great time learning about Keith Haring's artworks and had fun with the Roll a Haring Project. The worksheet was created using the image by One Eyed Pak.
Second grade also just completed their Matisse Inspired Compositions using warm and cool colors and Geometric and Organic Shapes. I wish I had focused more on the shapes, but I am still happy with the results. I think I might do a quick informal assessment and see if the students remember....
Third grade was a lot of fun, we made Van Gogh Inspired landscapes and talked a lot about vertical and horizontal compositions and the emotions that lines have. We finished the activity by writing a letter about our feelings and the artwork like Van Gogh did. Overall it went well, we used glue and pastels which were fun and exciting for students, the letter was a little harder and I am still thinking about how to modify it.
Fourth grade made their Op Art Images like I posted about before. I am still so happy with them, we got to create perspective lines, values to create a sense of space as well... overall it was awesome...
Last but not least... fifth grade got to start their self portraits. We looked at the line drawings of Pablo Picasso and talked about Contour lines and how they define the edges and surface ridges of objects. We then practiced observational drawing skills by doing Igor Stravinsky drawings by only exposing a small part at a time. Drawing lines rather than symbols. The students did a great job! When they followed the assignment... We also then made their self portraits and I felt like I had varying levels of success... I am really thinking I need to focus on developing stronger practice in this... and maybe portraits aren't the way to go...
Well that has been basically the last ten weeks of my life as a teacher... I am still above water... but man I can't wait for winter so I can get caught up!
