Another year is rapidly coming to a close, so I thought I would spend some time reviewing my favorite projects and blog posts from this year. Here are my favorite posts, in no particular order! 15. How to Paint Gorgeous Clouds with Watercolor 14. Clay Castles 13. Postage Stamp Art Project 12. Heart Photography Project with 3rd Grade 11. 25 Amazing Books for Teaching About Art 10. Editorial cartoons are a unit I teach every year. We even were … Read more…
A self portrait is one of those art projects that is always fun to do with kids. Kids often struggle to portray an accurate likeness of themselves (at least in their opinion), but their personality always shines through. I did not come up with this lesson all on my own. I saw something similar in an art ed. magazine years ago and adapted it and reused this one many times. In my opinion, that’s a great way to collect a … Read more…
I’m in love with these gorgeous clay flowers my 3rd graders made. This summer when I was on vacation in Michigan, I saw some lovely clay wall hangings in an artsy shop. They were layered clay flowers and they were HUGE! They were so awesome. I thought my students could make something similar on a smaller scale. The kids learned how to roll out a clay slab. Then, they cut out various flower templates, traced them and cut them from … Read more…
I was given a review copy of this new book See a Heart Share a Heart. The author takes photographs of hearts he comes across in daily life, from a leaf to a sidewalk crack to a moth. After reading this book to my 3rd grade students, we worked as a team to find hearts or create heart artworks indoors and outdoors. When I say we worked as a team, the kids collaborated and talked about how they could find … Read more…
Our school is building an addition, so I thought projects related to “building” would be fun. Legos are the perfect building blocks! So, we designed our own mini-figures with this template. I originally saw this idea from The Art Teacher’s Closet. We also stamped with Legos (idea via Lego Stamping from Filth Wizardry). Thanks to wonderful bloggers for these two ideas! My students LOVED them! They were so excited about these proejcts. Place your piece of paper on top of … Read more…
I still have some things to share with you from last school year. Towards the end of the year we had an editorial cartoonist visit our school. Every year our students draw editorial cartoons as part of the art curriculum. You can see some of the cartoons my students drew in 2013. When teaching about editorial cartoons, it is very important to show cartoons from both sides (in the U.S.= Republican/Democrat). It is also essential that you do not tell … Read more…
Did you know Hans Christian Andersen was an accomplished paper cutter? He created some very intricate and amazing silhouettes. I used a chapter from the book The Amazing Paper Cuttings of Hans Christian Andersen to teach about his paper cuttings. Perhaps if your students are reading fairy tales, this would be a great author/artist to incorporate. The third and fourth grade class drew silhouettes on black paper (using regular pencils) and cut them out. (Some chose to create their picture … Read more…
