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.

More Hearts

I got this project idea from Art Projects for Kids.( (click here) for her version). I used the aluminum sheets (instead of foil) and made the lines "embossed". We also used permanent markers. This is a great lesson to teach primary and secondary colors. I used this for my K-3rd home school art class and taught them about lines, shapes and warm and cool colors. We used Jim Dine as our inspiration artist and I introduced Pop Art style.

We also did the fiber art heart lesson in my two advanced classes and the kids loved it (click here for lesson)

Just wanted to show a couple samples of the ones the kids made. They all turned out really cute! I also used this lesson to introduce Jim Dine to them and we talked about mixed media. It ended up taking about 2-1/2 hours total to complete this project.

Fall art classes

Fall art classes started in September and I can't believe it's already the middle of October. I have two classes, one after school and one homeschool class. The fall is flying by for me, as I'm sure it is for all of you! I havn't blogged in awhile and I've needed for awhile to get some of this spectacular art work up that my students have done. In my homeschool class we started off talking about lines, patterns and shapes in drawing. In our first project we used watercolor and oil pastels and the girls created some great roosters. Also in the homeschool class we have worked with pastels and learned about abstract landscapes and warm and cool colors. Last week we started our third project and are painting with acrylics and learning to mix our own colors. I love to try to post at least one pic of every student's work, but sometimes my pics just don't turn out....photography isn't my expertise, so sorry if your work is not featured this blog. We get it on here before the semester is over.