2nd Grade: Symmetrical Butterflies

To begin, we looked at several images of butterflies and discussed symmetry. I showed them pictures of different things and the class had to say whether the item was 'symmetrical' or 'asymmetrical'. This helped the concept sink in for a lot of kids.

Step One: Draw the head, body and antennea. Wings come next...if they started the wings too small, I just had them echo the wings a second time to reach out to the edge of the paper.

This is a Kindergarten student...I did this with K also....we used those large tongue depressors for the body so they would draw LARGE! Got this whole project idea from deepspacesparkle.com by the way!

Step 2: Outline all pencil lines with a bold, black oil pastel.

Step 3: Begin painting with tempera. I set out trays with 6 colors and I created some shades in those paints....just to make them bolder. They turned out great!

Step 4: optional....we did this the next class after the butterflies were dry. Some kids needed extra time to finish painting their backgrounds and others could start adding designs on top of their dried paint...which turned out to really pop! Anyway, we used watered down (not too much!) black tempera to re-outline our butterflies. I don't think I've ever used this technique, but it really brought the whole thing to life.

Annual Student Art Show: March 20, 2012

Okay the eagerly awaited art show pictures are here! This was my first major student art show....and I think it went really well! It was A LOT of work, but worth it. Enjoy!

4th Grade Clay Castles

2nd Grade Chalk Pastel Still-Lifes

2nd Grade Weavings/Still-Life Drawings and Paper Masks

4th Grade Symbolic Self-Portraits, Warhol Soup Cans, Still-Life Paintings

3rd Grade CD Weaving Installation

1st Grade Paintings from the year....mounted on black butcher paper....

1st Grade Pinch Pots

Pre-K Paintings....since I don't teach pre-k their teachers were so nice to participate and help with the show!

Kindergarten Clay Medallions and Monster Sculptures

Yours truly!

Refreshments for the show (and the fabulous Ms.Brown!)

I wanted to bring people into the art room, so I put the 3rd Grade African Masks on my art tables...

more clay castles

4th Grade: Clay Castle / Slab Vessel

To wrap up our unit on Fantasy....dragons, castles....we created these Slab Vessels....or Clay Castles (they could choose)....they turned out great...and looked beautiful in the art show!

First we threw a slab...no pounding, just throwing....some of them got it right away and i had to straighten some slabs out....even them out...but for the most part, they did great on their own.

with our excess clay from trimming the bottom, we created a coil base

We trimmed the bottom and added textures with found objects....some people created crenels, the open shapes at the top of castles....yes i had to look that up for this project.

basically, they wrapped the slab/scored and slipped/and attached to coil base...

next art class we glazed and then i dipped them in crystal glaze and fired them...they turned out great!