Georgia O'Keeffe

Second graders at WES and BMS are learning about artist Georgia O'Keeffe.  O'Keeffe is well known for her magnified paintings of flowers, and her New Mexico desert paintings.  To see a preview of students working, click on the link below:

Grade 2 painting

Tape trees

Beginnings of first grade tape trees.

Free Draw Time

Sometimes when children finish early and there are only a few minutes left of art class, I give students the opportunity to "Free Draw".  Students can get very creative, use their imagination and draw, or sometimes it back fires and students have no idea what to do so they need a little guidance like a sketchbook assignment or some creative play.  Often times, I give those students Kinex, magnetic mosaic puzzles, or straws and connectors to build things. 

Most students have no problem just drawing.  They can come up with amazing things.  One of my second graders had some free time and was drawing and this is what she came up with: 

 

 

 

She told me it was a picture of the view of the sun room in her house.  She said she was also working on a drawing of the same thing at home, but this one is from memory. Pretty cool, huh?

 

Birch Meadow Open House

Hey Birch Meadow Friends, 

Open House is just a few months away.  We are fortunate enough to have KidsArt Fairs come in and help us with this open house event.  The company comes in and frames the student work.  They provide us with banners, paper, invitations, etc. for our event.  A representative from KidsArt Fairs comes in and helps me frame all of the work and the frames are available for purchase.  It is a pretty neat event.  I'm not sure if PTO will make this a fund raising event, but if it is, a portion of the sales of the frames will go back to Birch Meadow.  Which is very nice for our school. 

Here are some of the project's being worked on so far:

Grade 5 "Zentangles"

Grade 5 "Zentangles"

Grade 3 Radial Symmetry Designs

Grade 3 Radial Symmetry Designs

Grade 3 Radial Symmetry Designs

 

Cut Paper Designs

Fourth Graders at Wood End (BMS WILL DO THIS SOON!) looked at color relationships and how they could use them in a cut paper design.  We discussed warm, cool, and neutral color families, analogous colors, and primary and secondary colors. 

We also discussed the different combinations they could use in their work. 
We came up with a thumbnail sketch.  A thumbnail sketch is a smaller version of the work used to help plan out the main piece of art work. 

Thumbnail sketch example by Kevin

 

Once we were done planning out our thumbnails, then we got down to business and created our masterpieces based on our designs.  Here are a couple of examples:

By Emma W.

By Max C.

By Kyle

 

Grade 5 Slab Castles

Work by (from L to R): Nakeya, Michael, Chloe, Jenn, Julia, and Katie

Fifth Graders at Wood End created slab castles.  I adapted this lesson from the book, Dynamic Art Projects for Children, by Denise M. Logan.  The book is available on Amazon. 

I had the children discuss what a slab of clay was.  We determined that it was a flat piece of clay.  We then made our slabs and cut out the castle shape from a template my trusty volunteer drew (thanks Mr. M.!). 

The next class we added details like the battlements (the square shapes at the tops of the walls).  And we rolled them onto a paper towel tube to hold its shape.  We then cut out windows and added details like bricks or stones. 

After we let them dry, we glazed our castles. I let the students choose what colors they wanted to glaze their work.  We went over the glaze colors and students began to paint. We used 2-3 coats of glaze to maximise color and to guarantee coverage.  They turned out great! 


 

Clay Dragons Grade 1

Birch Meadow First Graders in Mrs. Beckman's class made clay dragons.  I got the lesson from Rina's K-6 Art Blog.  I thought it would be a different experience from my usual first grade pinch pot lesson. 

I was kind of not as much fun as I had thought they would be! Many dragon's broke in half and had me gluing things together for hours after school! I made the dragons with humps by having the kids roll out a thick coil and draping it over a T.P. tube.  Despite my displeasure super gluing together dragons and my fingers (that is an annual thing), they did end up looking really cool, and the kids were really excited to get them back.   

I have not yet gotten around to the other 2 classes (Mrs. Piazza and Mrs. Davie...sorry friends!!) doing a clay project yet.  Their art classes run on Mondays and for some reason, my Monday friends have less classes than any other day of the week ( Monday holidays, snow days, vacation weeks, etc.). 

I think I will have them make the S and the C shapes that Rina talked about in her blog. 

Here is a picture:

fired and glazed dragons