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.

Self Portrait K-1 style!

I did not do this project, but Mrs. Dillon, the main K-1 teacher made these darling crayon self portraits with the kids the first week of school. Too good to not post! She has a the doiley "frame" copied and the kids fill it in with themselves. 

Self portrait in paper: an old standby

At the risk of being repetitive, I did a lesson this week that is an old standby of mine. The reason I did it was that is such a great window into the soul of these kids! A simple self portrait is transformed by how they cut, tear and glue some pretty simple ingredients!  It is amazing how much personality comes thru when you see these!

Snowmen from 2011

Another catchup post from the best of last year's projects!

Tissue Paper Snowmen

Paper plate snowmen

Name Stained Glass 2012

This is a  project that I've had good luck with in the past, and the beginning of the year always seems like a good time. I did this with the K-1 class, and it involves them writing their name in block capital letters with black marker and coloring in the "in-between spaces" with different color crayon, to look like stained glass.

It is surprisingly challenging for these 5-7 year olds, but teaches them about negative space, line and patience!

Back to School Apples

Being that we live in the heart of apple country—and to be more exact—Gravenstein Apple country, I often have the kids do something related to apples in September. For the K-1 class, I brought in a Gravenstein apple for each kid and had them truly look at it. Its yellow with red and green stripes and spots. Not just an ordinary red apple. I wanted them to realize that art involves truly looking at an object and not just assuming what it looks like.

We used paper plates as the medium (I do this a lot!): they cut a "bite" or two out and then used that chunk as the leaf, and the bit of rim as the stem. These apples are "green" eventhough they are yellow!

Catching up from last year

Here are a couple projects from last fall that didn't got posted to the blog back then:

Watercolor Fall Trees

I had the kids draw a bare tree with black oil pastel, and then had them use watercolor to color the background. Some kids made a sunset, while others filled the spaces with different colors.

Pasta Collage pilgrims

In time for Thanksgiving, the kids made collages out of multicolored pasta. Lots of fun!