Drippy Art

I've been wanting to do some type of "Pour Painting" ever seeing this video a while back.  I've been hesitant because I wasn't sure about using so much paint for a project that might not turn out well, and also wondering how to manage a class of students doing the "pour" art all at the same time.
So when last day of school came around, I had a number of old canvases that had been donated and a number of small bottles of acrylics paints and decided to let the kids go for it.
I loved watching them experiment with the colors and dripping the paint down the canvases, but if I ever do the project again, I'll do it on a different day rather than the last day of school.  Last day of school is too crazy already, and to add a crazy art lesson was too much for me.
I can share though that the project used less paint than I thought it would.  Just a little paint dripped a long ways.
I originally had a few different ideas for dripping the paint.  Using spoons, using syringes (that was messy joke!), but eventually I realized for the purpose of having 12 kids doing the project at the same time meant that they just had to pour the paints right out of the 2 oz. bottles.  Next time I'll plan farther in advance and get more cans of paint donated and we'll use spoons.

Father's Day "Heart Books"

These Heart Books were made by 1st graders.  (Note, I folded paper and drew half a heart on the fold for each child before the lesson because many of the 1st graders would have had a hard time drawing the half heart big enough for a book.  I also drew the half circles on the fold ahead of time.)

Step 1:  Kids cut both papers at the same time on the fold.  They also cut 3 half-circles on the fold too to create the holes for the yarn binding.

Step 2:  Thread yarn through the 3 holes and tie a know at the bottom.

Step 3:  Write and illustrate the book, "Why I Love You"

Being Foodies in the Art Room

Have you seen this book?  It's very entertaining.

My high school art students made their own versions of food "beings".  It was fun:)

Summertime means ICE CREAM

I've been having fun doing ice cream art with my students..........
My 2nd/3rd Grade combo class each did an acrylic ice cream painting, then I put them onto a blue painted canvas for our auction last weekend.  The kids loved seeing their art mounted with together with their classmates!  Thanks to all my blogger friends for all the great auction art ideas.  I did a different project with every class and somehow can only find pictures of this one.  (Did I really not take pictures of the others?  At this time of the year, everything seems to be going at lightning speed and I have no idea if I took pics or not right now.)

And here are the Ice Cream painting my high schoolers did on canvas with acrylics.  The inspiration was Wayne Thiebaud.  First they painted a vibrant background, then the ice cream cone, and another background.  I tried to encourage them to leave a colored halo around the subject and some of the vibrant colors showing when painting the new background, but some got carried away and covered up all their original background colors.  Oh well, it was still a fun project.

This was 1st step, painting vibrant background.

Food Play....

"Sniffy" the mole.

Friday was a "Play with Food" day.  Kids enjoyed it, so did I!

These were done by high school students.  

They loved looking through the book, Play With Your Food, by Joost Elffers.

The blonde on the left was named "Barbara Streisand"....Nope, I didn't ask?

Mother's Day Weavings!

I saw a Christmas ornament idea using embroidery thread and cardboard circles.  I decided to use this idea for Mother's Day with my grades 5/6 students.  I used cardboard hearts though instead of circles.  (Ouch, cutting cardboard hurts, and I didn't even have to cut them all b/c I had help, but still ouch!)  These hearts look much smaller in the photos, but they're actually about 7" across and 7" tall.
This was a great texture project too.  The only hard part of the lesson was teaching some of the students how to tie their pieces of yarn together when they added a new color.  I taught the proper knot technique by giving students practice yarn first, but there were still a few kids who needed quite a bit of "knotting" help.
After the weaving, kids made their card and attached it to a piece of yarn to be used to hang the heart in a window or on a wall.

Mother's Day Hands

Okay, how is it that I've been an art teacher for 9 years and this is the first time I've done an art lesson where the kids have to trace their hands?  Hmmm?
These cute Mother's Day cards were done by my grades 2/3 and boy did they have a hard time tracing their hands!  (Thank goodness I happened to have their lesson scheduled the day before a different lesson w/ my 1st grade students.  I had planned a different card, but they were still supposed to trace their hands.  NO WAY was that going to happen, I took the time that night to make heart templates for the 1st graders to use instead of the hand tracing.)

I saw this idea on Pinterest. It was a photo and the link went to Tumblr.com, then I couldn't find the original?  This always happens when I get into Tumblr, does anyone understand that site?

Inside the card, the classroom teacher had the students glue in their Mother's Day poems that they'd been writing.  I love the teachers I work with, they're so appreciative of my art lessons.  I am really blessed.