SnowGlobes

My second grade students created snow globes filled with winter scenes.  

  Students traced coffee can lids to create circles on their sketch paper.  Students were required to make two different sketches of winter scenes.  They could get opinions from their classmates as to which was the better picture.  Acetate was placed over their final sketch and it was traced onto the acetate with permanent marker.  An additional coffee can lid was traced about one inch to the right of the snow scene circle.  Two lines about 1 inch apart should be drawn to connect the two circles.  

The Little Engine That Could

The Little Engine that Could inspired this fun project!  

My Kindergarten students have been spending the last few weeks working on Trains!  We read The Little Engine that Could which the kids really enjoyed and it sent such a great message- You can do anything you put your mind to!  So we set our minds to making great Train Scenes. 

The first concept we talked about was Line!  I asked the students what Kind of Lines Mountains were ... We eventually worked our way to Zig Zag Lines.  We used our fingers to make zig zag lines in the air.  THe students seemed to really enjoy this .  NOw for the Hard part- Making the lines on the paper!  After a little adjusting, we got our mountain Lines in!  To try something new, We used Coffee grounds to "paint" our mountains.  Boy What a strong aroma that made!  The Background was decoupage Tissue Paper, and the Track was made with textured paint rollers.

Huichol Yarn Paintings

Huichol Yarn Painting or Yarn Paintings are from the Huichol people who inhabit North Central Mexico.  The Huichol people originally made yarn paintings as an offering to the spirits to ensure a big harvest.  Now, the yarn paintings mostly serve as a decorative art form with their bright colors and symbolic images.  

Below my fifth graders designed their own unique yarn paintings with collaged backgrounds.  

             

The Crayon Box That Talked

In honor of Black History Month, I read the students the poem The Crayon Box That Talked  by Shane DeRolf.  This sparked a conversation about how important it is to treat people equally and how it is the uniqueness of people that make the world such an interesting place to live!  The students then use a mirror to draw their self-portrait and I encourage them to draw themselves doing something they love.  I have the students trace a crayon template onto colored construction paper and then together we draw the top and bottom of the crayon with guided drawing.  This lesson has proven great for first grade and am so happy I stumbled across it on Kinderart.com

"We Are The World" Michael Jackson

 As a first year art teacher, this was my first attempt at a group project.  I was very hesitant at first but very pleasantly surprised by the way my 6th graders worked together.  For the school's black history month concert,  I chose Michael Jackson as a focus in honor of his passing away.  My sixth graders were each given a different verse to Michael Jackson's "We are the World"  They were to make a sketch that really went along with the words or feeling of their verse.  Students got into groups with classmates who had the same verse as them, making the groups random.  THe students were instructed to look at each group members sketches and discuss which one they thought would work the best.  The students were then to make a final sketch together as a group.  THey could combine aspects from each of the four sketches or come up with a new one together as a group.