Christmas Art 2012 - RoundUp!

Here are the art lessons I had fun sharing with my students during the month of December.  I teach at a Christian school and December is a very special month.

Kinder/1st Grade painted a starry night sky and pasted this poem on the bottom (ha, not really pasted, we used glue sticks.....do they even make that thick smelly white paste I used as a kid soooooo many years ago?)

A bright star lit the heavens

To light the Magi's way

To the baby in the manger

Who was born on Christmas day

Materials used:

white construction paper

blue and white tempera paint

q-tips for white stars

yellow construction paper stars

2nd Grade made poinsettia flowers and glued this poem at the bottom:

At Christmas as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ

Let's keep in mind the truth of Christmas Day

It's our gift of love to others, in every way

Materials used:

construction paper

we also used scrapbook paper for added interest in the green leaves

glue & glitter

3rd/4th grade made these awesome Moulding Trees and you can find more info. here.

5th grade painted angels.

They drew in pencil, outlined with black crayon, and painted with watercolors.

And Lastly 6th grade made Mini Manger Silhouettes.

We used canvas and acrylics.  Students did a practice silhouette first on paper same size as canvas.

Folk Art Style

Big thanks to Holly V. at Lines Dots & Doodles for posting this fun Folk Art lesson.  I had never seen Karla Gerard's artwork before, and it's wonderful inspiration!

These were done by 5th graders and we took 2 class periods to do these paintings.  First we studied the patterns and variety in Karla Gerard's examples that I put on the board.

Then student's drew a rough draft version of their landscape on scratch paper.  Then a real version on construction paper.  Next every line was traced with oil pastels.

Next meeting, the kids painted their pictures with watercolors.

Fall Leaves

Oil pastels on black construction paper never fails to impress, don't you think?!

For this lesson we practiced a few different types of leaf drawings on scratch paper.  We also talked about complementary (opposite) colors on the color wheel and how the leaves will pop if they used complementary colors for the backgrounds.

Also, for a switch this time, when I taught the kids how to draw the leaves, I had them draw the stem and veins first, then the border of the leaf last.  I think this method worked better, especially for maple and oak leaves.  I also think this method helped the kids draw bigger.  Finally I didn't see any teeny-tiny leaves.  Do you ever feel like a broken record reminding kids not to draw too small?  That line is probably in my top 10 reminders to the kids..........(Now don't get me started on the other 9, my current relaxed state may disappear:)

Kids were each give two 3 1/2" x 5" black pieces of paper for the leaf drawings, and a 9x12" black paper for background.  After gluing on the leaves, they outlined the drawings w/ contrasting pastel colors if they had time.

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.

Jazzy Guitars Grades 5/6

Doing this lesson really helped the kids get the concept of rhythm and movement in art.  Diagonal lines and shapes for "movement".  Patterns and repetition for "rhythm".  I repeated that over and over again and pretty soon the kids were saying it on their own.

BIG thanks to Holly at "Lines, Dots, and Doodles" for posting this lesson and inspiring me!

The steps were:
Draw with pencil
Trace pencil with black marker
Paint everything, don't worry too much about staying in the lines b/c going to go over them a 3rd time
Paint over black lines with black paint

   

Mosaic Trees

Another idea found on Pinterest........ Loretta Grayson is the artist who inspired this lesson, I love her colorful art.  See lots here and more info. about her here.

The original on Pinterest were small square paintings that looked like they were done on canvas w/ acrylics, but after reading Loretta's blog - she uses a wonderful combination of pastels and paint, etc.  Because of resources, I decided instead to do the project as a paper mosaic.  It took 2 sessions, and I think they turned out great.
Steps:
1. cover 8x8" tagboard w/ mosaic paper squares
2. draw circle on 4x4" paper, cover w/ mosaic squares on opposite side, then cut out circle.
3. draw black tree branches and glue onto circle, then glue onto background.

These were done by 5th/6th graders:)

Plaid & Cats

My 5th graders did these last month.  Love this plaid theme, it would be fun 

right now w/ Red&Green plaid too!

I also love the blog where I found it, A Faithful Attempt.  I don't see many other art teachers out there teaching K-12 art, so this blog is particularly inspiring for me b/c she does super great lessons with amazing results.

Fall Leaves....

Big THANKS to Mrs. Art Teacher for sharing this great lesson.
My 5th graders did their version of 2 fall leaves and it took two, 45 min. sessions.  The first session was spent practice drawing different style of leaves on scratch paper, then drawing 2 leaves with oil pastels on black.  The last part of the lesson was to color leaves and background, add the "magic white" pastel to the background color to make it glow, glue onto black background and write "Fall".

Great Job NCCS 5th Graders!