Springville Museum of Art: 25th Annual Christmas Lamb

So, can I just be so proud and brag for a little bit?

Each year, the Springville Museum of Art hosts a show called the "Christmas Lamb" to celebrate the true spirit of Christmas. They receive over 350 artworks done by elementary students from all around Utah County each year and accept only 70.

2 of my wonderfully creative and talented students from my after school classes had artwork accepted! Next time, hopefully, there will be more, but I am so proud of them.

Their artwork will be on display at the museum Dec. 4-28, 2010.


Here is my second grader's entree: Christmas Tree





And my fifth grader's: The Angel Announces the Birth of Jesus

Greek Pots, take one

My sixth grade classes have just about finished a huge unit of Greek pottery. We took a few weeks to design 2D pots with crayon, oil pastel and toothpicks for a little something like this:






Then, we spend the next 4 weeks or so actually making the pots that they designed out of red clay and coils. Their pots have been drying now for almost 2 weeks, and after the break we will be painting them with a black underglaze, and then finally firing them! I am excited to be done, but mostly excited to have my desk and counter space back. Right now, it is completely taken over by drying pots.

So, I probably won't have much to say for a week or so. Off to Washington to see the in-laws for Thanksgiving! Yay! I am so ready for a little break.

A lesson in color mixing

Dick Blick has some really great tempera paints that come in dried cake form, like huge watercolors, that can create a translucent effect like watercolors but also can be opaque. They are great for color mixing as well.
Last week in my first grade classes we talked about how we can apply the ideas of addition and subtraction to mixing colors. They have learned a lot about the primary colors and what colors they make, but so far it has all been theory. So the last few classes we had, we put our color theory to practice.

Needless to say, they had a ton of fun.
I made (I hate to say "worksheet" but what else can I call it?) a worksheet to guide them through the mixing process and copied it onto a heavier drawing paper that would hold the paint, and they set to work.








The finished products looked something like this: (I know, the pics aren't the greatest quality, but you get the idea, right?)

Treasure Island

So my second graders spent a week or two learning about maps. How to read maps, the different important parts of maps, how to use them, and why we have them. All that fun stuff...So naturally we had to make one, but in order to make it fun, they were able to design their own Treasure Island. They were required to have a title, key/legend, scale, compass rose, and of course an island. I was pretty happy with how they turned out after I drilled into their heads how to use "short strokes, close together" to make the colored pencil turn out nicely.

This one below was done by one of my favorite little boys. (He is really cute--you know, the kind you can tell is going to grow up to be good looking, really athletic and very friendly. But he is not the typical sports-playing-popular-cute-boy. He works really really hard and always does his best and never gets into trouble. He's gonna be a heart breaker, I can already tell.)




After they finished their maps, we made treasure boxes out of origami. I gave them a little plastic jewel to glue on top, and glitter glue for decoration. To be honest, I was really surprised how much they LOVED making these. They couldn't stop talking about all the little things they were going to hide inside their treasure boxes when they took them home.

Native American Inspired Pinch Pots

4th Grade. White clay, fired, then painted with acrylic paint.

City Scapes

Second grade. What a great time to be alive. You have had a year plus to adjust to all day school, have pretty much learned the importance of keeping your hands to yourself, but still live in a world of innocence and bliss. For some reason, that is what I think of when I see this project that we completed. It took us a good 4-5 class periods to finish, but I know they actually learned something.


So, the 2nd grade core concept that we talked about was communities, how they can be different and like our own, and we talked about cities.

In art, we learned a lot about textures, crayon rubbings, and watercolor techniques. It was so much fun. But I cannot take all of the credit. I totally got the idea here. Thanks again, Kathy.

So here they are. Agian, how can I help but be proud?!

Jasper Johns inspired number painting

Can I just say, I love kindergarteners? They are so cute, and pure and willing to learn. They literally are dry sponges waiting to soak up whatever you are willing to offer them.
Over the last few weeks, they have really been working on mastering their numeral writing skills. Yeah, that's right, just learning how to write the numbers. I was instantly inspired to help them learn about an artist, Jasper Johns, who uses themes like the numbers, maps, flags and other symbols from popular culture to create beautiful encaustic paintings.
So, of course we did our own version. The first day, students were given a template with numbers 0-9 and we practiced writing each of the numbers to a cute little song. Then in each number's rectangle, we drew that number of something. So for example, in the box with the #6 we drew 6 spirals in crayon, and the next day painted a watercolor pattern over the top.

Sir Ken Robinson

Ever heard of TED talks?
This is a really, really inspiring one. Ken Robinson talks about how "schools kill creativity."

He has some really great points in this talk. It is about 20 min long, so if get a chance, it will be worth every minute you spend watching it.




So for some reason, if you are checking this blog on google's Reader, the video is not showing up. If you visit my actual blog, you will find the video. :)

Klimt Self Portraits

I have talked about Gustave Klimt a few times on this blog before. Once when I featured him as an artist of the week, and another time here, when I completed a portrait of my friend inspired by his work.

Well, here is another one. This is a project that I did with my 3rd graders when they were in the middle of 2 units. One, talking about their bodies, and the other was while they were writing "star reports"--stars as in the stars in the sky, comets, metiers, black holes, and other things that you would find in outer space. I went into their class a few days before we stared and took pictures of each of them. Then printed the pics and when they came into class, we wrapped it all together with the help and inspiration of Klimt. They had to cut out their face and arms, glue them onto black construction paper and then draw their bodies, a border and background using simple shapes--shapes of things you would find in outer space. They first used oil pastels to fill the space with patterns, and then went back and added another layer with metallic sharpies.

I love how they turned out, and I know that the students had a lot of fun.

Utah Landscapes

This project was to help 4th graders learn about the 3 major regions of Utah: the Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau. We incorporated the art ideas of impressionism and used oil pastels and complementary colors to create landscapes. The students chose one of three black a white photographs to copy. They were only allowed to use 3 colors: two compliments and white. Before they could start adding oil pastels to their drawings, I had them complete a value scale to practice blending their pastels and to figure out which colors they should use.


Here are some completed of the Rocky Mountains:





This is the Colorado Plateau:





And here are 2 of the Great Basin: (the photo they copied was of the Salt Flats)







One of the highlights of this project for me was, we got to finish it up with a field trip to go see this exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art.

Mondrian inspired compositions

One thing that is great about the kindergarten and 1st grade core subjects is that there is so much overlap between what they learn in the classroom and what is in the art core. This was a simple lesson for 1st graders about horizontal and vertical lines and the primary colors. I cut black strips of paper and had students glue 5 horizontal/vertical lines anywhere on the page (accept the edges). Then the next week, they painted one square yellow, blue and red. It was great fun.

Earth and Moon globes

My 3rd graders just finished a huge project yesterday, and I couldn't wait to share. We have spend the last month or so making huge Earth and moon globes out of paper-mâché and balloons I found at a party store that are about 3' in diameter. We spent a week learning about 3-dimensional shapes like cubes, spheres...etc, two weeks covering the balloons in newspaper and paper-mâché, and the next week painting them. We split the class in half and each half worked together to complete their globe. While some students were covering the balloon, others were in charge of making mountain ranges and craters.








We hung them in the library just in time for parents to come see them during parent teacher conferences and the book fair.

This is the extent of my sewing skills

A good friend of mine invited me over to her place the other night to make headbands for our little girls (her's is 8 months old, and mine is still 29 weeks in my belly). It was a really good excuse for me to make a flower out of fabric scraps that I have been wanting to make for a while. I originally made it for my baby, but loved it so much, I decided to keep it for myself. Hope that's ok!

Fall leaves: warm and cool colors

Ok, so I couldn't just put one post up for tonight...

This project has also been one of my favorites this year. I taught the 1st graders about warm and cool colors, as well as 2 watercolor techniques.
We spent the first day creating a warm color crayon resist. I passed out several different textures for them to do crayon rubbings with all over one piece of paper with warm colors: red, yellow, orange. And then did a watercolor wash over the whole thing.
The next day, we talked about cool colors: blue, purple, and green, and did a watercolor wash called "wet-on-wet". They painted their paper with water first and then added the cool colors. While the paint was still wet, they sprinkled salt onto the wet paint to create the snowflake-crystal-like look. The third day, I gave them a leaf template and had them trace 4-5 leaves on their warm colored paper, cut them out, and arrange and glue them onto the cool washes.

All I can say, is that I am so proud of them!

The first one is the example that I made along side them, and the rest, genuine 1st grade artwork.

Egyptian Death Masks

This is going to be the first of many post to come in the future. I have been so pleased with the work that my students are producing this year, and thought I would start off by sharing one of my favorite so far:
Egyptian Death Masks!
My 6th graders put these together, and I think they turned out really nicely. I gave them a piece of cardboard, had them block out a border, and draw an Egyptian head from a template I found here. Then they traced over their pencil lines in Elmer's glue. The next week, we wrapped the cardboard in tinfoil and rubbed it down smooth so the glue left a raised line, and the colored in the rest with sharpies. I gave them a handout with pictures and definitions of Egyptian symbols, told them they had to use at least 4, and have 2 patterns, and this is what they came up with: