Monet's Garden

First Graders learned about Impressionism by studying the artist Claude Monet.  We viewed pictures of his home and gardens in order to understand where the inspiration for his art came from.  Students then created their own impressionistic artworks using short marks with chalk pastels to imitate the brush marks in an impressionist artwork.  We also collaged on some lily pads.  Finally, We read the story Once Upon a Lilypad about a couple of frogs living in Monet's Garden.  Students used model magic to sculpt their own frog to add to their art.  Beautiful job first graders!!

Joseph Albers inspired paintings

Joseph Albers was an artist who liked to explore how colors interact with each other.  He noticed that red looked different when placed next to green than it did when surrounded by violet.  He created many painting of squares within squares to show what he learned about the interaction of color.
Second graders explored color as well.  However, instead of using the square we painted circles within circles.  Once our circles were complete we veered away from Joseph Albers and added a variety of patterns to each ring of color.  These paintings will also be used for our next project...stay tuned!

Read Across America Day

The Garfield celebrated Dr Seuss' birthday with a friendly competition.  Teachers were asked to decorate their door in the style of Seuss.  On Read Across America Day students toured the building to see all of our creations and voted for their favorite. The winning teacher recieved a gift certificate to use for classroom supplies.  I absolutely LOVED seeing everyone get into the creative spirit.  What a great idea!!
Here was my door:

And here are the doors from everyone else:

Everyone did an amazing job!  I came in 2nd place!

This was the winner: