Kindergarten ibook

Kindergarten students have been working hard learning about Eric Carle one of my favorite author illustrators.  I love the way he works, with so much texture in his paint.  The kindergarteners loved that too.  We had fun making patterns with paint and then just like Eric Carle we cut apart our texture paintings and used them to create our animals for our book.  For this project kindergarten students work collaboratively so the animals do not belong to one students but were worked on by both class.  Finally once we finished our animals we designed backgrounds.  

Thankfully we finished this project just in time for March, (if you didn't know March is READING month.)  I hope you enjoy the story and the art work they created the book is available for free download from the itunes store.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1083127837

Art Honors

I wanted to let you all know that 4 students from West Elementary represented Grandville schools at the Regional Art Exhibition this weekend.  (Our region includes all schools in Kent, Ottawa, Ionia, Allegan and Montcalm )

Two of the students from west made it through the regional level so they have the honor of their work hanging at the GRAM (Grand Rapids Art Museum).  There will be a reception for all regional students on Thursday February 11 from 6-8pm at the GRAM.  The work will remain on display there until Thursday Feb 25th.  

This show has already been judged and both students who made it to regionals will continue on to the State show.  Congratulations West Elementary Artists.

4th Grade Clay Spiral Bowls

4th Grade has music this semester so I will not have another post for them till next year but I just pulled their final project from the kilns and thought I should share.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this project.
Students took a piece of scrap paper and on the page they made a design using coils.  Then the smoothed one the outward side of the coils and slump molded their flat piece into a bowl by laying it over an existing cup or bowl.  One they were leather hard we pulled the cups out and took off the scrap paper revealing their spiral design on the inside of their bowl.

 After the first fire through the kiln I gave students a choice of painting their clay with tempra and taking it home that day or glazing and getting their clay back later.  I forgot to photograph any of the bowls that were just watercolored but they were beautiful too.

5th Grade Clay

 Clay is one of those mediums that students always love.  The 5th grade really wanted a day to 'play' with clay and make their own creations. So I showed an example of how to make a monster pinch pot, but then let the students choose if that is what they wanted to create or if they wanted to go their own way.   I do think these little monsters are very cute.

Other students used skills they had learned in past clay lessons to create a variety of fun things.  So there was everything from bowls like these to light sabers and robots.    Again I gave students the choice of painting of glazing these pieces so there was a huge mix of projects in the end, but most kiddos walked away happy with a project that was uniquely theirs.

Dr. Suess and Lines

Dr. Suess is one of those people I love to talk about in art class.  I love that he tried over and over never giving up even when other told him he was no good and to quit.  I love his creativity and ability to invent whole new worlds and I love his lines.  This week the first graders looked at the way Dr. Suess used lines and we talked about 3 kinds of lines, guide line, contour lines and expressive lines.  Then students spent some time practicing these lines while trying to create The Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and 2.

 After trying to recreate Dr. Suess characters we then tried to use our lines to create a version of ourself that used guide lines, contour lines and expressive lines.  Students were free to go any direction with this so where some made people others made animal characters or totally made up creations just like Suess.  Overall a very fun day of art learning all about line.