Panda Puppets

I think I loved this project as much as the kindergartners did! This was a simple 1-1.5 day lesson introducing  pandas, and collages facial expressions. The project began with a simple information book on pandas. The text and images gave the students a brief introductory to their appearance, habitat, diet, location.. etc. As always, this was a great time to allow students to share brief tide bits of their knowledge-base, such as what pandas eat--- "bamboo, bamboo, THEY EAT BAMBOO MISS STEWART!" The puppet was a simple plate with construction paper pieces and googly eyes. I attached another 1/2 plate pocket on the back of the plate to turn it into a hand puppet. It was fun to see the pandas parading to the bus on the hands of the kindergartners that day after school :)

Impressionism @ MAM

Beautiful  Impressionsm collection, "Impressionism: Master works on paper" on display at the Milwaukee Art Museum now through January 8th, one stop for the traveling show. I spent Sunday wandering the display of master's work, and left scrambling for pastels truly inspired by this collection. I enjoyed the collection of sketches displayed amongst the completed pencil, chalk, gouche, and watercolor works. If you're in the Milwaukee area I would recommend catching this show, check it out here: http://www.mam.org/impressionism/ A few of my students came to class excited to share that they had been to the exhibition and saw drawings by our artist of the month, Van Gogh.

Houses in Munich

I really enjoy the simplicity, and color choice in this particular drawing.

      

 Collaged "Houses in Munich' inspired by Wassily Kandinsky. The third grade students used oil pastels to achieve similar marks to Kandinsky's oil painted canvas. I demonstrated sketching the drawing out in pencil, then outlining in black oil pastel before adding color, so that some of the black oil pastel would smear into their other colors. Some students really enjoyed this aesthetic, others chose to keep their drawing very neat. To emphasis certain areas of the drawing, they added black construction paper cut into window, door, bridge, and building shapes. Some students just added a portion of black paper to a each building, others covered entire buildings, both good choices! The most challenging part of this drawing for the students was deciding how much collaged paper to add, I left it rather opened ended and followed up when they asked with "well, what do you think? Remember it's your drawing" ...many times. The never ending question!

Tree of Life (Part 2)

Third Grade: “Tree of Life” watercolor paintings. Part one: object printing with found objects and black paint (see previous post!) Part two: embellishing with an assortment of watercolors. I found glitter watercolors and metallic watercolors, both added great surface textures. Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway…I’m yet to meet an elementary student who doesn’t enjoy a dab of glitter.

what a HoOt!

Collage Owls by the Kindergarteners inspired by the wonderful vintage children's book. "The Owl and the Woodpecker." Check it out here: Brian Wildsmith

Plump Pumpkins...Plumpkins!

Yesterday Swallow Elementary turned into a day of  "Halloween Celebration." wow-za, glad I survived my first Halloween in an elementary school, through the sugar highs and lows. The costumes were great, and I was lucky to have two of my three sections of First grade throughout the day to wrap up their Plump Pumpkin Sculptures. We talked about facial expressions and emotions and they added "expressions" to their plumpkin friends.  By request of more pipe cleaner color choices, they also added hair-do's, arms, legs, and even hoop earrings-very creative. I love the moments when they envision more, and have great outcomes. My room looked like a pumpkin patch over the past week or so...happy seasons, folks.

Van Gogh inspired Sunflowers

 The First Grade Students have been busy creating still life paintings based on Van Gogh's Sunflower painting. We started the unit by studying Van Gogh's life, works of art, and painting process. The students really enjoyed this video I found on YouTube: Van Gogh Portraits We then created "Impasto" paint by combining sawdust and tempera paint together into a thick, chunky substance. I mixed the paints to begin with, but as the unit went on I allowed the students to decide if the paint needed more sawdust, or water and allowed them to mix it as needed (a "pinch of sawdust" or a "squirt" of water) -- -- they loved doing this. I set up a sunflower still life in the classroom and we talked about foreground, mid ground, and background and how to make each section stand out, but function together as a whole. Before adding paint the first graders "sketched" their sunflower still life including five flowers. Prior to sketching we talked about the life cycle of a flower and acted out a happy sunflower, as well as a sleeping sunflower and they decided they can look differently. The finishing touches included adding sunflower seeds using a "sandwich" technique: glue, sunflower seeds, glaze coating.