Scarecrows from spoons 2013

A scarecrow project that I did 5 years ago with the kids was a big hit. It involved getting cheap craftstore wooden spoons and embellishing them with scrap fabric, buttons, beads, strong, straw and other folksy items to make a scarecrow. Hot glue is a must, and so it makes this a fun craft. We did as a part of our Harvest party.

Sunflowers 2013

This fall, I did Sunflowers three different ways with the three different classes.

Kindergarten-1st Grade:

Another one of my absolute favorite fall projects is the two week project using elmer's glue on black paper to draw a sunflower and then the next week coming back over it with chalk pastel!

Check out the last time I did this for more detail.

2nd-3rd Grade

I had done the glue/pastel with the older kids two years ago, so I decided to do a 3-D paper sunflower with the "middle" classroom. A paper plate served as the center and yellow construction paper petals.

4th-6th Grade

Since I wanted to really show them the Van Gogh sunflower and give them a real experience, I chose acrylic as the medium for the older kids. We had a sunflower still life and they had canvas boards and acrylic.

Apple Stamping

 
Ah, the smell of apples in September and the pitter-patter of Kindergartners! A fall classic is apple stamping, but I gave it a bit of a twist this year by having them assemble it into a tree. My K-1 class only has 30 minutes and this was a non-stop lesson with three different paint stations, three different parts and three colors that had to rotate 12 kids through.

To check out all the art photos click here. 



I cut apples in half and then collected leaves (I used cherry leaves since apple leaves are not very flat)

The apple station was red, leaf station green and the bark station was paper bags that they used brushes to explore texture on. The kids really got into the stamping and art really feels like art when they a re slopping the paint around! Its amazing to see the reactions to the young kids exploring texture and printing.

In the next lesson, after paint had dried, we cut out the apples, leaves and the trunks were cut from tracings of their arm and hand.

Back to school 2013

Its already Fall! And I still haven't posted many of my Springtime projects! Bad teacher;-( Well that will allow me to sprinkle them during the Fall when I am inevitably busy.

Our little school has about 40 kids, with a large K-2 contingent, so that allows me to do more focused projects with the older 3-6th kids and lots of fun crafty projects with the young ones! This year I'm going to focus on American artists as well as American themes. Paired with a good dose of theory and technique.

Something that inspired me, for a potential project this year, was this artist' blog about collaborating with her 4-year old daughter.  I might need to do a project where I divide a  sheet into parts and each child has like 5 minutes to draw something and then pass it along, hopefully building on each other's drawings in a  fun surreal way??



http://busymockingbird.com/2013/08/27/collaborating-with-a-4-year-old/

Stay turned for some fun projects coming down the pike!

Owl collage

 A favorite of mine during the Fall are owls, which also seem to be popular these days.  They seem kinda autumnal, cute and aren't they supposed to represent knowledge?

This owl, which I did with my K-4th graders, used some collage elements. I first copied some sheet music (a song about birds) onto two different earthy colored papers, and then collected some newspapers and scrap paper.

The kids were told to cut a heart out of the music paper and that forms the body. You fold down the point to form a beak and up the round parts to form wings.  Then tear the newspaper into little bits for belly feathers.

Its amazing how much personality you get from the kids!

Pointilism Fall Trees

Its fall and its time to start giving the K-1 class a bit of Art History. Pointilism is one of my favorites and the materials a re dead simple. Q-tips and some paint!

I told the kids a bit about Pointilism and the artist George Suerat, and then quickly went to the paint. They could draw lines with the black paint but had to use up and down dots for the leaves.

So simple, but so graphic!

I'm always blown away by how differently each child interprets a project.

Handprint fall leaves

After the K-1 class finished their paper self portraits, they did some autumnal handprint leaves.

I had them trace their hands with black marker and make sure they overlapped to create interesting positive and negative shapes. Within these shapes they were to fill with different colors of warm fall color: red, orange, yellow, brown etc.  This was again a lesson on warm colors.  Plus it was a good test of patience and ability to listen!

Sunflowers in watercolor

It's Summer/Fall and that means a lot of old standbys, including this twist on a classic: Sunflowers are so cool looking and even the boys don't mind painting them since they are not all pink and girly! Here are sunflowers from past years. I had all three class levels do this project and it was fun.
I briefly talked about Van Gogh, the most famous sunflower artist.

We started with black oil pastel. The younger kids were instructed to use handprint tracing to make the flowers (there isn't anything you can't do with handprints!). I also used this to teach warm colors and cool colors.