Movement (4th Grade)

 4th Graders started the year by thinking about color and movement.  So on the first day we drew out lines and patterns and then we cut up our patterns into thin strips and glued them down trying to create a since of movement.

 

Mrs. Grant's class did this class too. Here a piece from one of her students.

Sunsets (Kindergarten

We read the book "SkyColor" by Peter Reynolds.  (He is by far one of my favorite illustrators.)  The just of the book is that the sky is not always blue.  Sometimes we need to think creativity.  With Chalk pastel then we then created our own sky's.  We worked by coloring not on our paper but on a ripped scrap of paper and then pushing the chalk dust off the scrap and onto our final paper in-order to create a beautiful sunset.

  

 We also looked at the work of Claude Monet with his beautiful boats and sunsets.  He was our inspiration for adding our sailboat.

My Many Colored Days (Kindergarten)

 Literacy and Art go hand in hand.  So this year in Kindergarten we will be studying not only traditional artists but also looking at the works of several children's Authors and Illustrators.   We began the year with Dr. Seuss,'s book My Many Colored Days, the book is illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher.  Throughout the book the connection between color and emotion is made again and again.

Then in class we began by having students pick their favorite color.  On a square of their favorite color they drew a self portrait.  Students then picked a color that made them feel happy or excited and they drew a picture to match that emotion and finally they picked a color that made them feel nervous, sad or mad and drew a picture to match.  Just a really fun way to start the year because it allows me to learn a lot more about the students what they like and what they don't like and what their drawing skills are like at the beginning of the year.   Finally, I had students glue all three squares onto a long black strip so that their work would all stay together and was ready to be hung in the halls.

Picasso Portraits (2nd Grade)

Second grades began the year by creating Self Portraits in the style of Pablo Picasso.  We looked at how Picasso broke up Portraits in to pieces that included views from many sides.  Students then needed to create their own multi-view work of art. I love the creativity that students put in to this project everyone is unique.

Monet (First Grade)

First Graders started the by learning about Claude Monet.  Monet is often called the father of Impressionism.  He focused on light and color and their effect on visual spaces.  We looked at several of Monet's Waterlilly paintings and did our best to create a project in his style.

On our first day studying Monet we painted with watercolor.   We worked wet on wet, meaning we
soaked our papers so that our colors would blend and blur together to gives us the look of an impressionist  painting.  On our second day working on this project we used oil pastels to add in our bridges and other details to make our Monet water gardens.

Welcome to a new school year

Welcome to a new school.  My name is Tara Meeuwsen and I have the extreme privilege of being the new Elementary Art Teacher at West Elementary in Grandville.  I am very excited to start creating and exploring art will all the k-6th grade students at west.