Why So Grumpy?

This lesson was inspired by my love of grumpy cat. I am not ashamed! I introduced the internet famous cat to 4th and 5th grade. Some had heard of her, some had not. We learned that her real name was Tartar Sauce and that she had feline dwarfism. Their objective for this lesson was to come up with their own reasoning for her being so grumpy and to determine a solution. They wrote a paragraph on this and then created an artwork to go along side it. I showed them step by step how to draw grumpy cat and the rest was up to them. Their drawings were traced with Sharpie and painted in. This project really let their creativity shine and I couldn't wait to make a hallway display!

The Scream!

I saw the idea of children placing themselves into The Scream painting on Pinterest and I loved it! I had to try it out with 2nd and 3rd grade. I started by showing them a slideshow about the painting. They learned the back story behind it, about the artist, and that there were actually several different versions made. This allowed them to see the effects of using different mediums on different surfaces which was pretty cool. Before beginning the drawing aspect of the artwork I had them write a paragraph of a time they felt scared. This set the mood for the lesson. A few got stuck and couldn't think of anything at first but I also told them that describing a bad dream would work too. When they were done with this, we started by drawing our open mouthed scream faces, with hands on our cheeks. Then we added the long black cape garment that we saw in the original painting. Next came the bridge and swirly lined sky. Their drawing was outlined in Sharpie and then colored and painted in. I made sure to include a presentation day where the kids could go to the front and hold up their scream picture while reading their scary tale from the back.

Haunted Houses

This Halloween season I decided I wanted the 4th and 5th graders to create haunted houses. We explored what the word silhouette means when it comes to art and looked at several examples including paper cut designs. I also displayed several haunted house designs for them to study. We brainstormed what things reminded us of Halloween such as bats, pumpkins, skeletons, etc and started thinking of how to add those things into our picture. They were responsible in designing their own haunted house silhouette on top of a flat ground line or a hill. It's important to emphasize that the house will be COMPLETELY colored in with black oil pastel except for the windows before they get started. Most students really struggled with wanting to add extra details to the house including shingles, potted plants, or bricks. With a couple of reminders that only the outline will show, they eventually grasped the concept. I did say that adding things to the SIDE of their house was ok, such as a porch, stairs or even gravestones on the ground line. Once I checked out their individual designs, they got started with the black oil pastel. This part is definitely time consuming and oh-so messy, haha. Giving them a paper towel to rest their hand on while they color helps with the smearing. Once their spooky houses are filled in nice and dark, they get to use watercolors! First they fill in the windows and doors with yellow and then they got to choose 2-3 colors for a spooky night sky! The results are even better than I hoped!

Art Club T-Shirts

This is my second year of teaching and my first time attempting to make Art Club t-shirts. I'm also embarrassed to say, this was the first time I tried tye-dye. Ever. I bought a kit from Michael's that had 4 different colors. I definitely kept adding water to the mixture to make the colors last for all the shirts I had to do...almost 30. Eeeks! Because it was such a messy ordeal and I didn't want to waste any of the precious colors, I pulled the kids aside in groups and had them choose 2-3 colors and let them watch the process. They were rinsed and hung to dry in my uncle's garage. The next week I made an EMY Art Club stencil from thick poster board. It was placed on each shirt and the kids took turns filling in the letters with black fabric paint. I was super proud of the results but boy was it time-consuming and a lot of work...haha. Seeing them rock these all year around school will do my heart good. I have two separate groups of students meeting on Tuesday and Thursday every week. Below is my Tuesday's group. Aren't they cute?

Alma Woodsey Thomas Paper Designs

We started out Art Club this year by talking about the art of African-American artist Alma Woodsey Thomas. She recently became a favorite of mine because of her long career as an art educator and love for children. Her works are both intricate and colorful and so much fun to look at. The students made their own unique designs out of pieces of paper. "The Eclipse" was our inspiration. We started by choosing any color background. They then traced the inside of a masking tape roll in the corner of their paper. This was used as a guide for them to start making rings. I gave them free reign with the color choices and patterns. Cutting their pieces the same size for each ring was encouraged as to keep the circle from becoming misshapen. This project can be time-consuming but totally worth it!

"The Eclipse" by Alma Woodsey Thomas

Wayne Thiebaud Gum Ball Machines

Students learned about the artist Wayne Theibaud and his famous dessert paintings. For this project, we were inspired by his gum ball machines. The first day was spent printing different colored gum balls onto a white circle. To create ours, we used some cute circle sponge printers I found at Michael's that worked PERFECTLY. I passed out a small dish of paint on each table with 2-3 sponges each. Each table had a different color to start with and then they were rotated around so that eventually all colors were used by each student. For each color they did 4 balls. I had to really emphasize sharing and waiting their turn. Surprisingly, they handled it super well. The next day was spent constructing our gum ball machines with pieces of paper. I demonstrated which piece went where. The last step was giving them a Sharpie and having them write 25 cents on the front. 

Rainbow Lines

I saw this project on Pinterest and thought it was such a great idea! The little one's learned about ROY G. BIV and then we painted rainbow stripes together. I made sure to have them go over their colors twice to make them super bright. These were set out to dry. The next day we read the book Lines That Wiggle and practiced cutting the different types of lines that we saw on scrap paper. When I began to see improvement, we drew out the different types of lines on the back of our rainbows and then cut them out slowly and carefully. Those pieces were glued onto a black sheet of paper like a puzzle with spaces in between each section. I reminded them to match up the colors.