Painting Landscapes

Okay, rewind about six weeks, when the trees were showcasing their blazing orange and yellow leaves. I got the students outdoors and we had a lesson on painting landscapes.

I was pretty impressed with the results-these were done by 3rd graders. I've got some talented little artists! Students painted on canvas with acrylic.

Art and Literature

Like many of you art teachers out there, I follow Deep Space Sparkle, Out of this World Art Lessons for Kids blog. Last spring I ordered one of Patty's Art and Literature PDF lesson plans for just $5.00. I finally got around to using them this fall in my daughter's kindergarten class, and I was totally impressed with the lessons, and the results! It was well worth the $5.00. The lessons are perfect for younger children; they have easy to follow directions and templates; and they incorporate great, age appropriate books. Plus, the kids LOVED them-in this particular lesson they went crazy over getting to decorate their hats! We had 13 children and about 45 minutes to complete the project. Most students finished except for gluing on the hat. We had a few that finished up the next class day. Here's some pics. You can click on the link below to get to Patty's blog and here's the link for the specific PDF that I ordered.

All of the supplies needed for the projects were already available in the classroom except for the items needed to decorate the hats. I just brought some leftover ribbon scraps, yarn, buttons, etc., from home.

Can't wait to do another one!

Still Life Paintings

As our final project in my advanced home school class we studied painting a still life.

Above is our actual set up-pretty primitive, huh?

Stunning Results!

They painted these in acrylic on a 16 x 20 stretched canvas.

For the Birds

Somehow I just deleted all the beautiful bird paintings that my students did recently. I will get this lesson posted back soon.

Painting Pollock

I had this planned as the first lesson of my fall art session, but due to rain we just got to it this week. It turned out to be a super fun activity- get out and try it while the weather is still nice! Our inspiration for this project is of course, Jackson Pollock. I love showing each student how easy it can be to create art by just using color and texture. It's a great way to get the creativity flowing for the year-messy, but creative (anyway don't those go hand in hand??).

I put out all sorts of brushes, squirt bottles, spray bottles, sponges, yarn, rollers, cups to pour from, etc., and about 15 colors of paint and let them have at it. Couple of tips: Do this outside, be sure and take your shoes off, and wear latex gloves (then they can also use their hands) Also, I reminded students of the color wheel and what happens when you mix complementary colors (mud). I encouraged them to do at least 5 layers and to try not to smear their colors together.

Sun setting on summer

With the cool, crisp air making a surprise visit every now and then, I thought this lesson was a great way to say farewell to summer. I was inspired for this lesson my one of my favorite art lesson girls over at Mary Making. Here's my adaptation to Mary's lesson, Sailboat Collage.

First one hour session: Students used a 9 x 12 canvas board and acrylic paint with texture tool for the background. Lesson objective possibilities are introduction to landscape/horizon line, warm and cool colors, color mixing and texture. I focused mostly on landscapes and warm vs. cool colors. While paint was drying we pulled out some paper in various textures; some handmade, regular, watercolor, etc. We used liquid watercolors to mix and experiment. I put out different sized watercolor brushes, fresh water and spray bottles with a water/rubbing alcohol mix. Students absolutely loved this process.

Second one hour session: Decoupage glue and gold metallic watercolor liquid paint for accents. Students used painted paper and pre-cut stencil shapes and traced their boat parts, added gold highlights, and then after a quick drying time in front of a fan, glued together the collages. Lesson objective possibilities are introduction to watercolor, papers and mediums, collage, fine motor skills. These beautiful masterpieces were all done by 8 year old boys!

Paper Collage Creatures

It's been so long since I've posted, I'm not going to even offer any excuses. But needless to say, we've had a crazy busy summer (in a fun way) and I've spent lots of quality time with my kiddos--and I've got a pretty good tan. Since I've taken a break from teaching this summer, I thought I'd try to catch up on posting some past projects. Here's one I did with a class where I modified the fabric collage project (click here to see) to make it more fun for the younger ones (5-7). I had pre-cut shape templates for several animals and they got to pick their animal and their papers. They did the tracing, cutting, arrangement, gluing and accents.

Covered it all with a good coat of Mod Podge

I tied in a short lesson on using shapes when drawing. We always do a fun exercise with the felt board before we start our project and see what kind of things we can make out of our basic shapes; like houses, trains, trees, etc. Then I show them how simple it is to draw a penguin and a mouse by breaking it down into shapes.