Kindergarten flowers

After completing our beautiful line paintings, kindergarten students explored collage by cutting them up and transforming them into flowers! Beautiful!!

Masai Self Portraits

First Graders began the year by discussing self portraits.  We viewed portraits and read the book The Many Faces of the Face to get an idea of how artists create pictures of people.  Students were allowed to choose a piece of construction paper they felt best described their skin color to begin.  I find most students gravitate toward the lighter colors, so we read the book All the Colors of the Earth, which talks about all the beautiful colors skin can be.   The face shapes were folded in half so students could consider symmetry and balance when drawing their face.  After all the features were drawn we turned our attention to our hair.  Students learned different techniques of rolling, curling and folding paper to collage pieces for their hair.  Once the face was complete we turned our attention to Africa and the Masai tribe.  The Masai are often identified by their wide collar necklaces.  Students discovered that they could actually tell a lot about these people just by studying their jewelry.   A married Masai woman gets more necklaces as she gets wealthier, becomes more important, and grows older.  The shapes and patterns might tell a woman’s age, or if she has children.  The class also learned that the colors they use represent different things as well.  Each student designed their own Masai necklace using patterns of repeating shapes and colors.  We read another book entitled The Masai and Me.  So students could compare how their lives are different from children in this tribe.  

What Lifts You?

Third graders learned about street artist Kelsey Montague.  Combined with the hashtag what lifts you- her artwork showing angel wings is a strong statement about positivity.  Yet, at the same time it also engages the public with social media like instagram.  People take a picture of themselves in the artwork and post what inspires them in their lives.  The wings are filled with smaller images and stories  that help make up the bigger picture.
Students began by brainstorming all the things that lift them up or bring them joy, like foods they like, activities they do, places they've been, toys they play with...Once they had their ideas they designed their own pair of wings and used the images from their brainstorm to fill them.  Finally, we added patterns to fill in the areas around our images.

Line Paintings

After drawing and creating lines with string Kindergarten student learned how to paint lines with tempera cakes.  We created 6 lines on our paper and then painted in between them to fill the page with color!

Vocabulary Day!

I love dressing up and creating costumes!  Vocabulary Day is always so fun- I love to see everyone getting into the creative spirit.  In the past I've dressed as a self-portrait, secondary colors and cool colors.  This year I decided to dress as a collage.  I taped cut pieces of paper all over me, created a paper wig and carried an over-sized pair of scissors with my word and definition....I'm already brainstorming ideas for next year!

Harold and The Purple Crayon

Kindergarten began the year by learning about line.  We learned the poem Larry the Line which is about a snake who can twist his body into all different kind of lines.  We even got a visit from Larry himself!  After practicing drawing some lines, like vertical, horizontal, diagonal, curvy, spiral and zig zag, we read the story Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We noticed how Harold used all the lines we just discussed to create his pictures.  We also discussed how Harold did not draw on paper but right in the air!  Students then used purple yarn dipped in glue to create their own lines that hang in the air!

Dot Day

Dot Day was a great success!  Students, teachers, and even some parents created quilt squares.  We discussed unity, variety and symmetry while designing our circle.  Circles were then cut into quarters and arranged on a white square by each artist.  All the squares were then glued together to create out school quilt.  I love the result!  We had enough artists to create 3 quilts- displayed on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors.

I decorated the hallways with dots...

Teachers and students showed off their dots!

even the windows got the dot treatment!