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.