Father's Day Tie- Card

Father's Day art for a sweet card.................Kids colored tie and shirt parts, glued them onto white background, and colored shirt and chest background. Then kids turned it into a card by gluing art onto front cover of folded colored construction paper.

Older students did the same lesson, but instead of cutting and gluing tie and shirt parts, I gave them a directed drawing lesson - with some results below:

Here's a PDF you can download for the tie and shirt parts. Your download will look like this: (No, I'm not technically skilled. Getting a blackline master onto my blogsite requires calisthenics my brain is completely un-used to. Hope someone uses it, and I'm going to go put some ice on my forehead now.)

Big thanks to San Gabriel Elementary artists!!!

Dancing Ballerinas!

Cover of Degas (Basic Art)

Big THANKS to Miss Julie for posting this lesson!! I did this lesson in many different classrooms and some of the teachers even used the art for their Mother's Day cards.

Before the lesson, we talked about Degas and looked at some of his artworks depicting ballet dancers.
Miss Julie gives a great tutorial on the lesson, and I used the circle and triangle template as she suggested.

Thank You Santa Rosa Elementary Artists!!

Still Lifes- Cezanne

Image via Wikipedia

Here's a lesson where my 6th graders this year at Flamson Middle School paid their respect to Cezanne.
Step 1 - show Cezanne still life examples and point out shadows, values, and tablecloth shadows.
Step 2 - put an upside down box on a desk in front of room, white table cloth on top, place vase and fruit.
Step 3 - students cut white table cloth, draw (add value on colored paper w/ crayons or pastels) and cut out vase and fruit, then glue onto background.
Step 4 - add lights and shadows w/ white and black crayon or pastels.

Thanks Flamson 6th grade artists!!!!!!

A rose is a rose, is a rose...., but is it?

Kid quote of the day (today):
This is a lovely work of art in progress, don't you think?
Well, I do. So I said to artist, "Oh golly, I just love your tulips. Those colors go so well together, and I also like the way you made your flowers different sizes."
Artist said, "Mrs. Smith, don't you know? These are roses. I don't even know what tulips look like!"
My response....just a smile. Really, what can a middle-aged woman say to a cute-as-a-button 3rd grader when she is certain that her Tulips are Roses?

One More Yarn Cutie!

Done today and too darling to not include with the others in post below....it's the leaves that get me on this one. Can you tell this little kindergartner cares about her art? :)

Yarn Flowers

When I saw this post of Yarn Poppies on Mod Podge Rocks a while back...I knew someday I would be borrowing the idea for one of my art lessons. Kindergarten art lessons are the hardest for me to come up with and this one was very fun.

Some tips for teaching this to kinders. Demonstrate starting the coil of yarn with the TIP of the yarn near the button, otherwise kids will lay the yarn down around the button not thinking they need to begin at the END of the yarn. (Awww Mrs. Smith, you mean I have to pay attention to details, even in art?!) With demo and instruction, this lesson took 40 minutes.

Materials for each child:

one piece of 6x9" background construction paper

one skinny green construction paper for kids to cut in half for stems

small green construction scrap for leaves

two buttons

two pieces of yarn, approx. 20" (I also let students cut their yarn once they thought their coil was big enough.)

glue (white glue works best) and scissors

This little guy (above) was the very LAST one finished, can you see the perfection in his coils...he was very proud - as he should be!!!

Okay, you may have noticed the glue is wet. It does dry clear, but who can wait for glue to dry when hands have to be washed, trash needs to be thrown away, shoes need to be tied, buttons on the floor need to be found, stories need to be told, books need to be shared, questions need to be answered, skirts need to be twirled (Yes, one girl was ADAMANT that I was not leaving her classroom until I saw how she could twirl her skirt), and lost snacks need to be found ----uhhh, life in a kinder classroom, where do I end, or begin, or end, or...?

Big thanks to San Gabriel Elementary kinders!

Well it's good to be back!

Phew, sometimes things go a little differently than planned, but all is good in the end. Glad to be back in the blogging world....It's May already - are you madly punching out end of the year lessons, and all the other loveliness that goes along with school in May and June? Seems like I never get a breath this time of year -
Meanwhile, as I was barely breathing on a recent trip to the library, I came across this book. Let's just say I laughed out loud (yep, I accidentally let out an audible guffaw in a public library) when I read the interpretation of "Whistler's Mother".
Here's a new book I'm adding to my favorites: The Cats History of Western Art, by Susan Herbert.

Read this (above), then look at pic (below) -- giggle, giggle.

These are just some of the fun paintings you'll find in this really great book, and the stories that go with them are clever, clever, clever!