A few more student pieces have been selected for our upcoming 2011 Student Art Show. Congratulations, artists!
First Grade Projects
Valentine’s Day Projects
Last week’s snow days off – lovely as they were – have really made a jumble of the art room schedule. I’ve got kids in all different stages of many projects, which makes me a little bit frizzled. So some of my kiddos who are way ahead of the other classes have been doing some fun little Valentine projects while the other classes catch up. They are having a blast and I’m enjoying chilling with them a bit too!
Kindergarten Heart Flowers
Second Grade Flower Pots
Surprisingly, these goofy Love Bugs created by First and Second grades were their favorite!
Caterpillar and Fly Love Bugs – and the artist is pretty cute too!
New Art Show Selections
First Grade Picassos
First graders have been learning about Pablo Picasso and cubism this week. They’ve had great fun talking about Picasso’s portraits that show many views of the face at the same time.
We created our own Picasso portraits, and included a review of warm, cool, and neutral colors as we painted our portraits.
The final step was to go over all of our lines with black oil pastel so our shapes would pop out. This turned out to be the most difficult step – those lines kept hiding, and Mrs. Brouwer kept sending everyone back to find one more line!
First Grade Reindeer
Don’t you just love these crazy reindeer?! Classroom teacher Mr. Jurewicz created these fun collages with his students. He has them displayed on their lockers, and I laugh every time I go by them! Thanks for bringing an awesome art project into your classroom, Mr. J.!
Lois Ehlert Bird Collages
First Grade artists are finishing up a project inspired by Lois Ehlert’s winter story, “Snowballs”. 
We created a cardinal collage and learned about the French word, collage, or “to glue” along the way! The cardinal was made by folding a red construction paper circle in half like a taco – and in half again – and one more time, to make an ice cream cone – and we end up with how many triangles – eight! Students cut along the fold lines and played with their triangles “like a puzzle” to build a standing or flying bird. Everyone’s bird is different since we all put our “bird puzzles” together in our own way.
There’s something so fascinating about using the paper punch – and my 1st graders loved punching out a big pile of white tagboard holes for the “snow”!
Turkeys
I’ve been a little “turkeyed out” this year and didn’t create a new Turkey Day project for my younger grades. But I shouldn’t have worried…one of my fellow classroom teachers, Mr. Jurewicz, came up with this great project that his kiddos created last week. I’m thinking Mr. J. should think about trading jobs with me sometime! Way to go Mr. Jurewicz AND your creative first grade crew!
Whoops this one is a little fuzzy, shaky hands – but still too cute to pass up!
Color Mixing Fun
My first and second grade artists are reviewing color this week. They have such great memories – everyone recalled the primary colors and remembered how to mix them to create secondary colors.
Color mixing is always a challenge for my little ones – seems like we always end up with “mud” as they try to create their secondary colors. Not this time! My kiddos traced around a large circle, and I squirted a dollop of red, yellow, and blue tempera paint in the middle of their circles. Then I placed a sheet of saran wrap on top – and what fun! My students smooshed the paint around – they loved the way it felt with the saran wrap on top of the paint! They were instantly able to mix the secondary colors, and when they pulled the saran wrap off, the results were beautiful.
Not sure yet what we’ll do with our little color wheels – they may show up in a future project.
Even our trash looks pretty today!
First Grade Scarecrows…finished!
First Graders added collage scarecrows to their landscapes this week. They did an amazing job of following directions – I gave them lots of ideas on making their scarecrows, put the materials on the tables, and they had a blast! (special thanks again to Patty at Deep Space Sparkle for her post on scarecrows…gave me courage to try them with first garders!)
First Grade Scarecrows
First Graders began a scarecrow project this week – they can’t wait to get to the scarecrow part! I need to give kudos to Patty at Deep Space Sparkle for this project – I’ve always avoided scarecrows with the little people – too scary?! Deep Space has some excellent ideas for scarecrow projects, without the scary. We spent this week creating the landscape for our scarecrows, drawing a hilly field with oil pastels and painting with watercolors. Next…scarecrows!
