10th Year of teaching

I just finished my first week back to school. I've decided to continue with this blog the way it is, name and all. Last year I taught 8th Grade HS Art 1 and 7th grade Art 1. This year I will be teaching 6th grade and 7th grade Art 1. I will post some pictures of my classroom and how things are setup. Stay tuned!

2nd Grade Color Blending - The Beach

I usually do this lesson during the beginning of the year, but I saved it for the end. With summer break fast approaching, I like to get the kids in the mindset of summer vacation. We did a blending project to make water look more deep, and full. Usually students color everything blue, and you can't really tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. Here are some examples of this lesson on color blending.

Just a simple drawing with land, sea, and sky.

Art Club Stop Motion Set Design

I have an Art Club here at school, and for our final project, I thought we'd make a stop motion animation about a fire fighter saving someone from a burning building. We watched some stop motion films, wrote up a story, and laid out a story board about the movie. We practiced making sound effects, picking props, and shooting a couple of scenes. Here is a sneak peek of the set design we made out of cut caper glued to cardboard. Each member had a specific job that contributed to the overall building of the set. Next week, we begin filming!

I love the layering of the city in the background, it adds so much depth.

Some students just wanted to draw on the buildings instead of use cut paper.

Reunion Tower is a little small, eh?

The fire station is pretty close to the burning building.

5th Grade Birds Eye View Perspective

You always see the same perspective drawings from the street, or a hallway. I wanted my students to try something different. I found a video on Youtube about a Birds Eye View of a city. So I wrote up a lesson about it, and we had a good time doing this project. Things started to get out of hand when students got closer to the edges of the paper. To them, things just didn't look right. Here are some examples of some great works!

Just look at those tops of trees down there! 

Even though the building tops are exact, I still love the cartoon look of them.

Some kids used mechanical pencils, I love how precise the lines are.

Great first attempt!

The traffic flow on this one looks like a nightmare!

3rd Grade Beach Landscapes

Once again, with summer fast approaching, all I can think about is going to the beach. Some of my students have never seen the beach, So I thought I'd teach them hot to properly draw a landscape with space included. This was one of my favorites.

This student is really good at coloring. 

5th Grade 2-Point Perspective

For Spring break, I observed some other teachers for some PD. I saw one of their lessons on 2 point perspective and thought what a good idea. I came back to school, and showed my 6th grade students the lesson and some students got it, while others struggled. I think the hardest part of this lesson is remembering to always draw to the vanishing points. Here are some great examples. 

With so many kids playing Minecraft these days, the students were surprised with how close this art approach came to Minecraft. These students really got it!

Some students just kept going. Once they got it, they had so much fun just filling up the page.

2nd Grade Crayon Rubbing Texture Paintings

We did a lesson texture paintings, and then I took the class out to the playground to do the artworks. I gave the kids 2 crayons, and told them to rub them on the paper of various textures around the playground. They used trees, stairs, fences, concrete, wood, and other things. They turned out really good. Here are some examples of some of my favorites.

I really think this project was a success. The kids really had fun seeing the texture come through the paper. I liked the way students compared or discovered new textures and ran around to share what they found. It really shows kids that texture comes from everywhere, even though they pass by these textures everyday while having fun.