Sunday, November 11, 2012

1st Grade Insect Diagrams

After our "Roberto the Insect Architect" project on architecture and blueprints, I had my first graders make "Roberto" himself. We discussed the word "illustration" and looked at several illustrations of insects. Then we looked at a diagram of an insect. In our idea books, we wrote about illustration and drew a bug (with all it's parts). Then we labeled it to create a diagram.


A helpful illustration...

We painted the bugs with tempera cakes...







 
What would the world be like if bugs were gigantic?
 This lesson is inspired by NPR's "EarthSky" that I heard one morning about super huge prehistoric insects....here's the link:
 
 

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Spirit Week @ DuPont....

This week has been 'Spirit Week'...we also had the Auction this Thursday...so needless to say, thank goodness Friday arrived...and it also happened to be 60's Day!
 
Mrs.Hardin, Mrs.Dean and me

Look at all the hippies...Mrs.Baker, Mr. and Mrs.Wilson, Mrs.Turner, Mrs.Scobey, Mrs.Walker and Ella!

Kindergarten Owls

I needed a filler project for my Friday class that I had already seen once this week and in a mad rush 20 minutes prior to them walking in the door I settled on these owls...and I'm so glad because they look so great!






3rd Grade African Masks

3rd grade is about to begin their first clay project of the year, which is a clay mask. Last year we did African Masks, and they were great so we're continuing on the legacy.

I had them sketch a LARGE design for the clay mask this year....Day One ~ Discuss 'transformation' and African culture...why do we wear masks?...celebrations, etc.....then they get to draw their design.

We drew the designs in pencil, then oulined with black marker. I provided the oval shape on copied paper.
Also, note the awesome idea book entries.

This lovely artist added a surrealistic design with an "eye mouth" ...we just studied Salvador Dali.



I was so impressed with their desisns and color choices!


Ella's mask design!

Annual School Auction~Art Projects

Well, it's finally over! For the past few months, we've been preparing art projects to be sold at the school auction. This year it seemed like it creeped up on me and I tried to keep it under control, but 27 group projects can be overwhelming! Anyways, it always turns out just fine and this year the art was great!

2nd Grade Collage Hands


Framed by my wonderful husband, Daniel



Kindergarten Thumbprint Critter Flower Pots

3rd Grade Pattern Mirrors and you can see the 1st Grade Leaf Prints behind them that I forgot to get a picture of!
 Sorry 1st Grade!


4th Grade Abstract Pumpkins


Painted this old window the morning of the auction....turned out okay for a last minute project!

Monday, September 24, 2012

Georgia O'Keeffe Close-Ups

I had Georgia O'Keeffe on the brain and had my 3rd graders make these awesome zoomed in flowers. We used the 'glue drawing' technique on black paper. The next class period they 'blended' chalk pastels to create shading and depth.









Paper Quilling with 4th grade

So I found this project on dickblick.com and here's the link: http://www.dickblick.com/lesson-plans/eye-popping-paper-curls/
 
I had my first class choose their image to draw. The next classes seemed to need more parameters so I had them trace their hand as a starting point.
 
 
We used 8" x 8" black paper that I pre-cut for them. I also pre-cut 1/2 inch strips of paper. After experimenting, we found that the paper looked better if we cut it in half. Although the different heights look interesting.

Two pieces of paper quilled together looks neat and kind of 3-D~ish. 

We 'tapped' dots of glue along the bottom edge of the design and gently pressed it down for at least 10 seconds.




I had these small dowel rods that were pre-cut into 4 inch pieces. These worked best...pencils were too big and toothpicks were too small for this construction paper. It didn't want to conform to the small object. If you used paper from a book or thinner paper it would work much better.


It's a work in progress and may be something they can work on instead of free-draw.
 
It would take about 3 full class periods to finish.
 
I'll post the finished products as they complete them!