Kindergarten artists showed off their cutting and glueing skills as they created these colorful spring birds. Chirp Chirp!
Birds
Springy Folk Art Birds
Third grade artists are dreaming of spring while creating these colorful Folk Art birds. Working in the style of American Folk Artist Heather Galler, their birds reflect the many patterns and bright colors that Galler loves to use in her art.
Love the way these artists have arranged their markers in rainbow order so they can select just the right colors for their project!
I CAN goals: compare and contrast folk art with other works of art; use pattern and color in the style of Heather Galler.
Rizzi Birds
First grade artists have been learning about American pop artist James Rizzi. Rizzi was known for his colorful, childlike art style and crazy images – his art is a favorite with Georgetown’s first graders!
James Rizzi
We began by looking at Rizzi’s art and talking about all the activity happening in his paintings. First graders noticed the many symbols that Rizzi uses, and had fun looking for some his favorites – happy suns, hearts, birds, apples, and peace signs.
First graders painted a Rizzi-style bird and added their own symbols to finish their cool and colorful birds.
I can: Tell a friend what a SYMBOL is; draw a Rizzi bird; use mindful paint and gluing on my project.
Third Grade Coil Pots
My third grade artists always learn coil pot building for their clay project. This year I switched it up a bit, and the coil pots became bird nests. We squeezed “twigs” through garlic presses to finish the tops of our pots – this was a big hit with my third graders!
glazing our nests 
Bird Nests fresh from the kiln.
Of course, what’s a nest without a bird and some eggs? So we created some sweet little birds from Model Magic to live in our nests.
We colored the model magic by dabbing it with blue markers, then mixing it until we got just the right shade of blue.
Forming a bird
waiting for eyes and beak to be painted
eggs in nest – cute even without the bird!
Kinder Cardinals
First Grade Birds
First Graders are finishing up a new project – sweet little chicks! We learned about collage and following directions while creating this cute project.
This project is adapted from Nicole Siebert’s “Innovative Art Projects for Children”.
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”!
Second Grade Landscapes
Second grade artists have been reviewing landscapes this past week – new words for our Word Wall include: collage, foreground, middleground, and background! First we tore map pages from an old atlas – and spent some time exploring different parts of the world. (I’m so glad my students find maps as fascinating as I do!) We glued a layer of tissue paper over the maps for a “cloudy” look – then added cut paper birds and “doughnut flowers” colored with permanent markers. The finished pieces make me think of summer birds preparing to migrate south – and studying their route on a map!
