Start of the Second Projects

It is hard to get my brain wrapped around the fact that it is already the end of October. This year is flying by! I walked into my art storage closet last week and noticed the stacks of art from every class in the school. It is nice to see...the hard work that students put in and the creative ideas that were produced. This is why I have been extremely excited about starting our second projects!

Most classes are starting their second projects, but I did want to mention that because of several days/holiday breaks coming up, my classes will not be on the same steps/schedule anymore. For example, because of the upcoming parent teacher conferences, my Thursday classes will now be a week behind. My Tuesday classes will also become a week behind after next week because of Election Day. I am going to try my best to keep you updated on everyone's progress!

Until then, here are updates from this past week...

Kindergarten
Students are continuing to create their crayon resist paintings. I love how these are turning out and cannot wait to add the fringe to our faux "carpet" artworks during the next two weeks!

1st
After choosing the majority of our materials for our mixed media chicken artworks, students this week began assembling their creations. We began by choosing our felt for the body. After finding the felt, students used fabric crayons to draw only the basic components of the body (head, neck, body, and wings). Students carefully cut out their body with scissors in preparation for gluing it to their background next week.
Because it took around 30 minutes for all students to pick out their felt, students participated in a fun drawing activity while they waited. Students were shown this picture...

This painting, by Ernest Lee, is called "Talking Chicken Heads". Students were asked to draw a picture of what they think the chickens are talking about. Here are a couple of things they came up with...

2nd
Students in the second grade spent this week discussing portraiture. Students looked at many different examples of portraits from throughout art history, looking at different clues that tell us more about the people pictured (such as facial expressions, color of the portrait, surroundings, and possessions). After a great discussion, students spent the last portion of the class period critiquing a portrait in small groups. I am very proud of how our discussions went! Great Job Mrs. R's and Mrs. W's class!!!

3rd
Students in third grade also began their new projects this week by discussing the Element of Art, value. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. We discussed how values are created through tints and shades (tints are a color + white and shades are a color + black) This creates a monochromatic color scheme. For their upcoming projects, students will be using value scales as a main element of their composition, so we practiced creating them this week using crayons.

4th
Fourth grade students also started their second project by discussing the technique of collage, as well as the Element of Art, texture. Students learned that while creating their collages in the next couple of weeks, they will be using both types of texture, actual (how something actually feels when you touch it) and implied (how something looks like it would feel).
Because we still have a little bit more to talk about before students begin creating their collages, I told students that the subject matter of our collages will be birds. Students were asked to choose their favorite bird and begin thinking about how they wanted their collage to look (is their bird standing/flying/sitting...what color is their bird....what does its beak look like...)
Students will complete their planning next week and will be creating the first elements of their collages in the next couple of weeks.